Cannot install 400alpha7 in Toshiba Portege 7010CT [SOLVED]

[bde]

Using FreeDOS boot disk, I successfully booted to X using puppy-400alpha7-397-k2.6.21.7-seamonkey. What I did not succeed was installing on /dev/hda1. Briefly, I don't have MS Windows (wiped NT out). Wiped it clean using DBAN. Used a FreeDOS bootfloppy to boot. I have an IDE hard disk (/dev/hda) and an USB DVD-ROM to put the puppy CDROM (that comes out as C drive when FreeDOS is booted). The RAM size is 96 M. I also have linld on the floppy (A). I went to C drive, and issued the command:

a:\linld image=vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz "cl=root=/var/ram pfix=noram,nox"

This booted to shell environment. Ran xorgwizard, chose 1024x768x24 mode. After coming back to shell environment, ran xwin that loaded the X successfully. The responsiveness in X was exceptionally good, and was very surprised knowing that I only have 96 M of RAM.

The next thing was installing on ide internal harddisk. Ran Menu/Setup/Puppy universal installer. This led me to gparted. Created /dev/hda1 as main disk (ext3, boot flag), and /dev/hda2 (256 M size) as linux-swap disk and completed the partition by applying it. fdisk -l command shows all these two partitions from command shell. Rebooted the computer to make sure that the hard disk partitions were read back. Next, ran Menu/Setup/Puppy universal installer again, chose internal (IDE or SATA) hard drive on first screen, OKed hda selected, saw "Puppy Universal Installer" window with Install Puppy to hda1 choice on the top part. I clicked on the icon for this hda1 install, confirmed the install in the next window [You have chosen to install Puppy to partition /dev/hda1, which has a ext3 filesystem and the size is etc. etc... ] by pressing OK. But, nothing happended after that.

To troubleshoot, I next opened a command shell, issued command puppyinstaller, chose Internal (IDE or SATA) hard drive on first screen, chose hda again from the next screen. At this point found the error message in the command shell:

ls: cannot access /mnt/hda1/pup_[0-9][0-9][0-9].sfs: No such file or directory

Next, clicked icon next to Install Puppy to hda1 in the next screen on the top (Puppy Universal Installer), confirmed install on /dev/hda1 in the following screen, and found the same error message again in the command shell as above. And, the puppyinstaller exited.

So, it was unsuccessful. I tried a few more things to install puppy on /dev/hda1 without success. Don't know how to get around the access error. Don't want to do frugal install, but a full install on hard disk. Would appreciate any help very much.

[Bruce B]

Sounds like you know what you do.

I've not played with Dingo at all. As I'm sure you know it's a testing release.

I think, but I'm not sure, based on something I maybe read or dreamed that Dingo doesn't have /dev/hd?? devices.

That what would have been an hd* device is now an sd* device.

Example

replace /dev/hda1 with maybe /dev/sda1

Most important - if you can look in the /dev directory and see if there are any /dev/hd*, if so than it didn't switch to only sd* devices.

Hoping I helped more than harmed, as you already know more about Dingo than I do :)

[rcrsn51]

You might want to go over to the Bugs section and read the Dingo Alpha 7 thread at the top. It contains a discussion about bugs in the Universal Installer that sounds like your problem. BarryK also supplies a patch.

[BarryK]

Yes, the bug you describe was fixed. Now, I can't recall if it was before or after the release of alpha7 -- must have been after. I have probably mentioned it on my developer news page http://www/puppylinux.com/blog or in the alpha7 feedback thread in the bugs section of this forum.

[Béèm]

As of alpha 7 ide drives are hd* again and not sd*
Maybe the bug has to do with some scripts not adapted for this.

[bde]

I have finally been successful following your advice. Thank you all for your input. I repartitioned and reformatted hard disk (/dev/hda) having linux-swap, /dev/hda2 (boot) and /dev/hda3 with the later two formatted as ext3. Next, edited /usr/sbin/puppyinstaller using an editor (e3vi), went to line 1138 and added idehd and satahd as mentioned in http://www.puppylinux.com/news/news400a7-400b.htm under "Full hard drive install fixed." Installed grub in /dev/hda. After rebooting, had to do Ctrl-C. Ran xorgwizard and xwin. Shutting down from xwindows and rebooting to xwindows are now hasslefree. Another computer converted from Windows NT to Linux.