Wee keeps hijacking my boot log

[Avery N. Sekur-Pearson]

Hey everyone! I was going to say hi once I fixed the probles I've been having, but new ones keep popping up. Currently Kee keeps hijacking my boot application and I just have to turn off my computer and use a live CD.

Anyway, I mainly just want to know if I can somehow make the menu.lst document read-only and prevent it from being overwritten? I've been trying to work my way through kee but I don't want to modify a file as important as the MBR without checking.

I'm running Slacko 5.0.0, Slacko 5.0.1, Browser Puppy and Lupu. Lupu and Browser are full installations, Slacko I can't use because somehow Kee got on the live disc. My laptop is an old Acer with half a gig of RAM and a single core CPU that runs at 1.6 Ghz.

I just want to be able to try out some Linux distros without constantly being bothered by things I try spending hours on the forum to get information about, Linux is tarting to feel like a chore- which I why I posted here.

Any help you can give would be really appreciated, I mean that. You know, I'd even be willing to give you this computer (once I get a new one).

But seriously, I'd be really happy to get some advice.

Oh, and I'm not good with forums at all so this is probably in the wrong section, my bad.

[jafadmin]

IIRC, "wee" is a grub4dos shim that is invoked when it has trouble booting from a ext4 partition.

MY best advice would be to wipe the first 100 meg of the HD with "dd", then use a LiveCD with GPartEd to reformat the disk to ext3.

Short explanation: If the disk gets formatted with the ext4 64bit extensions, Grub4Dos can fail. Some ubuntu vatiants, and at least 1 puppy variant format ext4 partitions with the 64bit extensions enabled by default.

This is only a problem on the boot partition. Using ext4 on non-boot partitions works ok.

[rufwoof]

reformat the disk to ext3

ext3 is a great choice for desktop (Puppy) setup's IMO. Not as good as ext4 for recovery in the event of power crash, but generally you'll not be running as a critical server (so ext3 is good enough). Better than ext2 in the event of a power crash. And more 'portable' i.e. can act as ext2 when accessed from alternative systems (FreeBSD for instance can mount ext3 rw as though it were ext2, but can't mount ext4).

[Avery N. Sekur-Pearson]

You answered my question and taught me some useful stuff about Linux. I had researched the different ext types before choosing them and did notice that ext3 had some advantages over ext4, as ext4 really only excelled in data recovery.

Problem with taking the first hundred megabytes is that's where the info is located, hehe. Will do, though. Er, I guess while this topic is open mind if I ask how big to make my swap? I have it at one gigabyte, and this laptop only has half of that in RAM.

(also, I keep my data on other drives which have been fine each of the 10 times I've just pulled the plug on this POS laptop)

Seriously though, thanks guys. Now I can get to playing with Linux instead of attemping to choke it through the keyboard

Oops, just realized I need to ask: If the first 100 mb of the disk is the Swap, should I still wipe that?

[jafadmin]

Linux will find swap space wherever you put it on the disk. I usually put it at the end.

I recommended overwriting the beginning of the disk to obliterate any remaining artifacts from previous problems. This will wipe out the contents of the disk, so be warned.

BACKUP Everything first!

[bigpup]

how big to make my swap? I have it at one gigabyte,

That should be OK.
Really depends on how many programs you try to have running at one time.
I GB swap should handle it.

Type free in a console will give you a report on how the memory and swap are being used.

[Avery N. Sekur-Pearson]

Ha! Backups. I laugh with scorn .

No really, none of my important info will even FIT on this piece of junk. I'm just playing with the distros I can install and nothing is lost no matter how bad I break things, it's great
Cheers for the tip on using 'free', mate! I'm trying to learn all the aspects of Linux at once at one and it's bloody overwhelming.

If anyone can think of a good aspect to focus on, or whether it's best to take it all at it comes, please message me! Otherwise you can close this. Isn't that what you fancy forum say?

[mikeslr]

Hi Avery N. Sekur-Pearson,

As jafadmin said "Linux will find swap space wherever you put it on the disk." The thing is Linux finds it on bootup and uses it by mounting it. I don't know about other applications for managing drives and partitions. But gparted can't manage them if they are mounted. You first have to turn swap off.

Maybe someone else has a more efficient method, but what I do is start gparted to make certain I know the name it has given to the swap partition. Then close gparted, open a terminal and type the command:

swapoff /dev/hdbX

or

swapoff /dev/sdaX


where X is the number gparted uses.

Then, reopen gparted.

mikesLr

p.s. The foregoing terminal commands are copied from the notes I store on my hard-drive and is either a quote or paraphrase of something someone on this forum provided. I have the memory of a seize, much better at recalling where I've store things than the specifics of what's been stored.