Baslinux mailing list

[Joel <aspendr AT telus.net>]

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Joel wrote:

Could you explain what you are trying to accomplish here?  It is somewhat 
over my head and I would like to learn from it.  Trying to go right into X 
without typing startx?  What does xlock do?

Okay, xlock, is just like a password protected screensaver that comes with X. Or that you can (in my case) download from Slackware. Also, when I said "Type startx" I meant I added things to the /root/xinitrc file so that it would run xlock before it ran icewm, and hence creating a mini login.

Aliases can go into /etc/profile.  In BL2 I put them in /root/.profile but 
BL3 does not seem to do it that way.  If you put them in profile they work 
for all users.

Okay, that's good to know.

Further down I see you are trying to share a partition between BL2 and 
BL3.  Would it be possible to boot with
loadlin zimage root=/dev/hda1/part1 for one and root=/dev/hda2/part2
for another or does linux not let you share a partition that way?
I presume you would need to do something with mtab or fstab as well, and 
do a mk2efs on /dev/hda1/part1 instead of the whole partition.  But this 
is probably not possible or someone would have tried it here by now.

Do you have space to add a second hard drive, assuming you cannot add 
another partition?

No, I'm on a laptop, and there's no room for an extra drive, but there IS tonnes of space, I'm just wondering if you can just slam a partion in my specifying the blocks. Oh, and I'm running LILO, not loadlin.

> What I've done, is when I run "startx" it runs xlock, and then icewm once 
> you've gotten past that. Of course, when I try to add "/usr/X11/bin/startx" 
> to /etc/rc, it complains when run and says "/etc/xinit" not found. Writing 
> this, I realize I can create an alias, but how would I go about doing that? 
> Would I add something to /etc/profiles?
>
> Second, when xlock runs, it says this:
>
> Blah about the mode.... (ignore this)
>
> Name: root@basiclinux
> Password:
>
> And then when you type something or not, nothing appears. There's no cursor 
> or anything. Just when you hit enter, it says "Verifying password" and then 
> continues to icewm. What I'm wondering is if there is a way to change the
> "root@basiclinux" and password. I'm on BL3, and I know you've told me 10,000 
> times to switch to BL2, but I'd really prefer to stick to BL3, just because 
> all my settings are in BL3.
>
> I know this is getting off topic, but if I WERE to create a dual boot with 
> BL3 and BL2, would I be able to just create a new partition starting at the 
> middle of the blocks on my main partition. All this about Linux keeping the 
> drive neat...is that really true? Right now I have two partitions:
> /dev/hda1            Ext2 BL3 partition
> /dev/hda3             Compaq Diagnostics Partion (don't ask)
  

Is there an hda2?  (Maybe hda3 was a typo).

I once had a Compaq 486 which was supposed to have a diagnostics partition 
but it came without a hard drive and I was able to download the diagnostic 
software and use it from floppy disk.  Would this free up a large enough 
partition to do you any good?

No, not a typo, and it's not an error either, many websites have told the same thing about Compaq's nutso partition.

> I'm assuming I can just fdisk in between sectors. Thanks.