(eng / fr) Install SliTaz-Loram : Gparted don't start / boot halts on blank screen

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(eng / fr) Install SliTaz-Loram : Gparted don't start / boot halts on blank screen

(5 posts) (3 voices)

Started 10 years ago by XavRab
Latest reply from christophe
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XavRab

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Member

Hello,

This is my first message on this mailing list. I discovered SliTaz today, what a great endeavour ! I presume the working language to prefer is english, thus I write in this language, though my mothertongue is French. So you may as well answer in French if you wish so

I wanted not to throw away my old IBM Thinkpad Pentium III 650 MHz 128 Mb RAM. It is currently running under Windows 98. It holds one partition of 2.79 Go and another partition of 2.77 Go.

I use the LiveCP SliTaz-Loram, that I downloaded and burned today (the normal LiveCD did not work, I had a blank xterm window and that was all).

The CD drive seems to work well, since I have no problem in booting from the LiveCD.

1/ This is what happened before I was seemingly able to perform the install to the HDD (see point 2 as regards "seemingly"...)

What follows has happened some 4-5 times before it would proceed.
I open the TazPanel. I choose Install. I click on "Execute Gparted". The window of Gparted opens and seems to be scanning the drives, but quickly closes after about 1 second.
Though, I try to proceed, by clicking on "Continue installation"
There, I select :
Slitaz source media : LiveCD (since it is what I am using...)
Hard disk drive :
- install Slitaz to partition : /dev/hda1
- format partition as : ext3
[X] Use a separate partition for /home : /dev/hda2
[X] Format partition as : ext3
[X] Install Grub bootloader
[ ] Enable Windows dual-boot --> I do not enable, since I just want to erase Windows entirely, and format the entire hard drive

I then click on "Proceed to SliTaz installation", and confirm.

The "Proceeding" step stopped quite immediately with the message :

Warning: /dev/cdrom: Mount failed
Error 3 invalid source

2/ Then the install goes on but does not boot

One more try, and this time the "proceeding" phase of the install goes on. Please remember I still haven't been able to start Gparted, and thus to define the different Linux partitions' sizes, except indicating that the install be done on /dev/hda1 and /home on /dev/hda2...

But the formatting and the install seem to perform well, with no error and all right, ejecting the LiveCD and asking to reboot.

As in all my tries, whereas Windows is systematically able to shut down the computer or reboot it, I have never been able to reboot or shut down the computer from SliTaz. I bypass this problem by using the computer button to shut it down, then start it again.

The GRUB menu appears. I select the one and only item : SliTaz GNU/Linux (cooking) (kernel vmlinuz-2.6.37-slitaz)

Something like the following is displayed (I cannot pause the screen so had to boot and shut down manually a number of times to be able to catch some elements). I have only noted what I could catch as being odd, obviously not all the lines :

Filesystem is ext2fs. Partition type is 0x0B.

EXT4-fs (hda2) : unable to read superblock
mounting /dev/hda2 on /home failed : invalid argument

I think these are the only error message displayed during this quick booting sequence.

Then it displays the SliTaz locale language selection window (I choose French locale for France)
and then I choose the azerty and click OK again.

And then NOTHING more happens. Blank screen. I wait... nothing.

Does somebody has clues to help me ?

I have to say that I am not an experienced Linux user. So I beg you to be as didactical as you can :-)

Thanks a lot.

Posted 10 years ago #
christophe

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Member

Do NOT install from lowram cd. Installation does not work from lowram cd.

You have to use the "standard" cd for that.
the standard cd is normally not recommended for such low ram, since / is loaded in ram and would consume up to 100 MB out or 128
but I am not sure you have much choice, and it should be enough so that you can install from it.
Then, you can reboot from disk and you have enough ram to do some light browsing with midori, and some abiword/gnumeric. No firefox.

Posted 10 years ago #
XavRab

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Member

Unhappily, I have first tried to install from the normal SliTaz CD. As I said in my first post, I could not use SliTaz in liveCD mode, since all I got was a void xterm window, but not any element of the graphical interface that I have been able to see with the loram LiveCD. I switched to loram version after reading a post in the French forum exposing that very same problem (only a void xterm window), and being given the answer that the loram liveCD shall be used (but indeed, it may not have been about INSTALLING SliTaz).

I forgot to say that during the boot after "installing" from loram CD, i also got the following mentions :

Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 13
Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 8
Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 1
Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 12
Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 6
Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 7

Posted 10 years ago #
Aleksej

offline
Coder-hobbyist
XavRab,
Only thoughts about blank xterm. Can you type commands in it?

To see Desktop content (icons et wallpaper) try to type this command:
```
pcmanfm &
```
If you use latest SliTaz -- Rolling (not SliTaz 4.0) know, that SliTaz developers changed PCManFM to SpaceFM, and you need to use another command:
```
spacefm &
```
Ok, do you see Desktop now?

Want to see panel(s)? Try next:
```
lxpanel --profile slitaz &
or
lxpanel -p slitaz &
```
By the way, I have black screen in Rolling version when I tried it (February), and (almost) have no issues in SliTaz 4.0; so I think you use Rolling with SpaceFM.
Posted 10 years ago #
christophe

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Member

I think that due to the short (128MB) memory, you booted "justx" from the normal CD, in which case lxpanel will not start whatever you do.

The way out of this is to boot the lowram CD, run gparted to repartition your disk (from the application menu or from a terminal, NOT from the installation menu), and create some swap (300MB sounds good). If you want at that stage you can also partition your disk so that you have separate / and /home, though personnaly i would probably not care to differentiate those on such a small, limited system (I assume there is a usb port you can use to later backup /home should you need it)

Once done, reboot on the regular CD and from the main page, select to boot from line 2 ("core"), not from line 1 ("live", which would lead to the dead-end justx terminal you have seen)

it will be slow because your system will page to disk (on the partition you created before) but it will boot the system, from which you will be able to install Slitaz on the remaining space. Installation menu can be reached from the second icon in the upperleft corner. Once installed reboot and you should be fine.
Good luck

Posted 10 years ago #

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