Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

I just experimented a little bit with the "DOS VERSION 3.50" of BasicLinux, 
which i got from 
"http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/"; and perhaps 
someone might be interested in the experiences i made with it. The initial 
install is without problems. Unziping the archive into a directory named 
"BASLIN", located directly in the root directory of a FAT-formatted disk 
isnt'n really difficult.

But soon appears the first difficulty: Nobody told me, that it has to be a 
PRIMARY partition, a logical disk within an extendet partition doesn't work! 
When researching the reason for that behaviour, one finds very soon, that 
this limitation exists indeed, but is completely unnecessary. By simply 
adding the following lines to the file "linuxrc" inside the initial ramdisk, 
this limitation can easily be overcome:

mount -t msdos /dev/hda5 /DOS  2>/dev/null
test -e /DOS/baslin/fs.img && break
umount /DOS  2>/dev/null
echo '/baslin/fs.img not found on /dev/hda5'

mount -t msdos /dev/hda6 /DOS  2>/dev/null
test -e /DOS/baslin/fs.img && break
umount /DOS  2>/dev/null
echo '/baslin/fs.img not found on /dev/hda6'

mount -t msdos /dev/hda7 /DOS  2>/dev/null
test -e /DOS/baslin/fs.img && break
umount /DOS  2>/dev/null
echo '/baslin/fs.img not found on /dev/hda7'

I assume that someone simply forgot theese lines, especially as the 
corresponding devices "/dev/hda5" to "/dev/hda7" are already present. After i 
added the lines to my copy i could boot Basic Linux from DOS drive "D:" aka 
"/dev/hda5" without any problems. For a newcomer to BasicLinux, the steps it 
takes to correct this inside the compressed initial ramdisk image, might not 
be totally obvious, therefore some brave soul should update the distribution 
package accordingly. 

Another, certainly not absolutely necessary but usefull complement to the 
above described changements is the following fancy DOS batch file:

@echo off
if "%1"=="TRY" goto loop
%0 TRY c d e f g h i j 
goto end

:loop
shift
if exist %1:\baslin\boot.bat goto found
if NOT "%2"=="" goto loop

:found
echo Found: %1:\baslin\boot.bat
%1:
cd \baslin
boot

:end

It searches DOS drives "C" to "J" for a file named "boot.bat" in a directory 
named "baslin" located in the root of the respective drive. As soon as it 
finds one, it changes to that disk and directory to assure that the boot.bat 
procedure to load linux is called from the right place. Of course, the 
one-line boot.bat could as well be incorporated into this procedure directly.

With theese minor corrections BasicLinux runs fine on that mashine, at least 
as far as text mode is concerned, even network access was no big deal. 
Graphics, (X-windows) is still a bit difficult. The mashine has an on-board 
Intel 810 graphics controler which supports Vesa 2.0. I could not manage to 
get the "standard Xserver" run properly, but Xvesa runs reasonably well, even 
with 1024*768 pixels. Despite of what the page "Add-ons for BL3" says, 
links2, abiword and even opera work in this environment, though the colors 
are sometimes rather strange. On another mashine, with a graphics controler 
supporting Vesamodes up to 1024*768*16 the even run with correct colors.

I like especially the jwm windows manager which has everything i need vet is 
very lean and fast. Only opera is somtimes a bit slow.

So far, the bright side.





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