Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Matrix Mole wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:
> 
> > How much space does non-gui Win98 occupy and is this something free or
> > must it be purchased?
> 
> Basically, what I've done is installed Win98 and then edited the MSDOS.SYS
> file to not boot the GUI automatically (BootGui=0) and then added boot.bat

We do this to all Win9x computers too.  I presume when you want to use 
Windows you hit F5 while booting to bypass autoexec.bat.

> into my autoexec.bat file. This way when I boot it automatically goes into
> BL unless I plug a monitor in and prevent the autoexec from running. If I
> need to go up into Win98 I can just then type "win" at the dos prompt. Of
> course, I have yet to need the windows gui on that system, thus the reason
> for getting rid of it completely.

I had heard rumors of some way to run Windows from the DOS command line to
avoid all the icons and the long wait to load everything.  Just type win
and the name of whatever program you need to run.  I would like to be able
to do that for wordview because WORD keeps coming up with ridiculos new
features that antiword (and wvware and catdoc) can't keep up with.  The
only other thing I might use Win98 for is to play realaudio as I have had
no luck with linux sound yet.  (Perhaps it might help to use an SB16 card
that is new enough not to use IRQ15?).  Or to burn CDs until I learn to do
that in DOS or linux.  What were you thinking of using Windows for when
you installed it?

Does anyone know how to stop the Windows bmp from coming onscreen while
booting into non-gui mode?  (Is there some file I can just delete
somewhere?).

> > How does one go about using one linux in two or more partitions?  Apart
> > from mounting all the partitions (in fstab?) would I have to specify which
> > partition files are on, as in DOS?  (c:\bl2\boot.bat versus
> > d:\baslin\boot.bat)   Or would I just tell it the directory name without
> > the partition name?  /home  rather than /hdb2/home   ?   If the latter is
> > the case, I may as well make four primary ext2 partitions.
> 
> You have to list the other hard drives in fstab and where they will mount
> to. For example the line:
> 
> -----
> /dev/hdb2   /home   ext2   defaults   1   2
> -----

I looked at my fstab and there is already a line

/dev/hda3 / ext2 defaults 1 1

with '/' instead of '/home' and 1 1 instead of 1 2.  I presume the '2'
means 'second linux partition for this particular linux'.  

> will have hdb2 house everything in the /home directories. When navigating
> the linux file system the location of the partitions is seamless. The two
> best reasons for doing this method instead of having everything on one
> partition are space and protection of data. If the data on the /home
> partition is corrupted, then your root file system is safe from the
> corruption, also if you need more space in the /home partition you can add
> another or larger hard drive.

How would corrupted data affect anything else?  Do executables always go 
in the main linux partition?  I am thinking of putting all my compiled and 
downloaded packages in another partition.  I don't have anything else 
resembling data to put there yet.  

If I run out of space, it seems fairly simple to just clone linux to 
another drive.  (So far I ran out of space in 125M and then in 500M but of 
course I cannot possibly run out of space in 1 G.)  I just ran across 
Steven's instructions, which I think were for using BL2 ramdisk to clone 
from one HD partition to another, and hope they will work to set up four 
more linux computers this weekend.

Steven, can this be done by booting directly to the hard drive with the 
files you want to copy, and not booting into ramdisk?  Please let me know 
if the following ought to work:

I would boot into BL2, cd / and then mount the second partition (in my 
case on another drive.  Linux is installed on /hda3 in my case and will be 
cloned to /hdb2 , which is  sitting in another computer but temporarily 
hooked up via IDE cable to the first computer).

Boot into linux on hda3.  Mount hdb2 to /mnt.
cd /  (on hda3)
tar -zcvf temp.tgz *  (makes one very large file on hda3, or would it work 
                       to instead tar -zcvf /mnt/temp.tgz *  ??)
cd /mnt              (you are in / of second drive linux partition hdb2)
tar -zxvf /temp.tgz  (unpackages the file from the first drive
                      to the current location which is the second drive)

edit fstab to change /dev/hda3 to /dev/hdb2 and recable the second drive
back into the second computer.  (We have long IDE cables, but would need
to leave the power plugged in from the second computer.)


There was another method of send/receive using hostname 'localhost'.  
Would it work to send temp.tgz this way instead of individual files?
Which way is less likely to introduce errors into files?  


> > Can the same swap partition be used for several linuxes?
> 
> I don't see why it can't be done, someone else here on the lst has managed
> to get Linux and Windows operating on the same drive and using the windows
> swap file for their linux swap space.
> 
> > Thanks, I just downloaded that and 13 pages of a primer on how hard drives
> > and partitions work.  IDE, CHS, LBA.  I put copies at my website.  So you
> > have used this with linux and not lost anything?
> 
> Yep, when I first setup my BL machine I didn't install Win98 on it, I did
> an old school format c: /s and then fdisk/mbr so that it would boot with
> nothing on the drive at all. Unfortunately, win98 fdisk wouldn't let me
> create a partition smaller than like 50MB IIRC, so I used partition
> manager to shrink the Win partition down to roughly 3MB (just enough room
> for the BL needed boot files and a tiny bit of storage if needed), and
> then added the free space from hda1 onto hda2 (before I added the second
> drive to my BL system).

I wonder if partition magic would also work to resize linux partitions 
without losing installed files. It works with DOS that way.  Anyway, it is 
nice to know that I can in theory resize my partitions when I outgrow them 
again.  (But really, 1G ought to be more than enough for linux unless I 
start writing my own programs, or collecting mp3 files.)

Thanks to everyone for the ideas and information.   It is great being the 
only really persistent beginner among a bunch of experienced linux users.