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Hi folks,
I know this gets said a lot on this forum, but I am a bit noobish with Linux. However, this is even more so with your guys' OS, SliTaz--so please help me gain some understanding, if possible.
What I've been trying to do was to make a permanent installation of SliTaz as the only OS on a single, primary partition that I made. This has been very difficult however--I'm curious, is this sort of task perhaps not what SliTaz was designed for?
I've yet to succeed in booting into SliTaz without external devices (such as USB, CD, etc.), even though I've installed the OS to HDD by every guide available, including the ones in the documentation (the provided "slitaz-installer" method and also the "by-hand" method described). After install and reboot, if I don't have a CD in the drive, I just get a short message that I assume means the BIOS can't find an OS, something like: "Reboot and select proper boot device". However, I tried to install Lubuntu just awhile ago, and when it started installing, it said there was an unknown Linux system installed, and it stands to reason that that was SliTaz... I just need to figure out how to get it to boot properly, I think, and be accessible! Thoughts?
Incidentally, I wonder--is it necessary to install SliTaz to HDD in order to get it to remain on my system independent of external devices? (I know there is a method described to install to RAM rather than HDD--is that different? I'd love to understand.)
A perhaps slightly different problem is that, though I've installed the OS over and over, the packages that I have sometimes downloaded haven't persisted, not even on the medium of my CD--is that normal? (If I eventually decide to go the route of consistently booting from USB, for instance, I'd really like to get changes to persist!)
Anyway, I have a hunch that the installing to HDD problem and the persistence problem are not one and the same--also, is that a good hunch?
Thanks in advance for thoughts on these admittedly vague problems. I'd love to provide more info, but honestly, I'm not sure what to say. Please, ask away,
Brian
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Hello Brian,
If you can run the LiveCD, normally you can install SliTaz. What version of SliTaz did you try to install : 4.0 ?
slitaz-installer is the installer of the previous versions. With 4.0, use TazPanel (icon in the left top corner of the screen or Applications>System Tools>SliTaz Panel)
Then Install>Install SliTaz and follow instructions. It should work.
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@Ceel: I have been trying to install Slitaz 4.0, yes. I also tried with 4.0 cooking.
I wasn't sure if I had tried installing that particular way before, so I tried again just now, and again it appeared successful until I rebooted, took the LiveCD out, and found nothing on the computer.
I'm at a loss of what to try. Suggestions?
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I just tried to install SliTaz again from TazPanel. Reading the printouts carefully, I noticed this:
"
5. Running grub-install on: /dev/hda
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /mnt/target/boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.
"
I tried to go to the directory it said, but there's no "boot" directory in "/mnt/target"; in fact, there's nothing. Could this be a problem? When I attempted to install grub as it said, I was not successful.
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One more update for now. I decided to install SliTaz on another old computer, to be a bit more scientific, and was completely successful getting it on the hard drive. So that's awesome. Also, I checked the grub-install quirk from the above post, but it was identical on the successful computer, so I guess I can rule that out.
Now I'm just trying to think of factors having to do with hardware or perhaps the partitioning that could cause the first computer to fail to install, where the second succeeded.
Brian
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Hello from another newbie! I don't know exactly how noobish you are (i consider myself "just past the noob level" myself), so you might already know some of this, but here's some noob advice anyway:
- First of all, a general recommendation: read up! When you read a guide and you find a word, a command or a process you don't understand, look it up. Try search engines, wikipedia, linux man pages.
Your problem seems to be with the boot process:
"After install and reboot, if I don't have a CD in the drive, I just get a short message that I assume means the BIOS can't find an OS, something like: "Reboot and select proper boot device"."
...so i'd recommend starting out with looking up BIOS, MBR, linux bootloaders and the boot process in wikipedia, and also here on the SliTaz website.
Directly to the quote above: BIOS doesn't boot the OS directly, but through a boot loader, e.g. Grub. With your setup, you need to have some kind of boot(loader) code installed to the MBR of your hard disk, otherwise it's not a "boot device" but just a storage volume. Additionally, there needs to be some kind of bootloader installed on the partition you are trying to boot (typically it's the same one, but not necessarily; The most typical exception to this is if you have $Wind£€dows and Linux on two partitions on the same computer). Additionally, the configurations of the bootloader need to be right.
Of course, all of this should be taken care of by the auto-installer if you just choose the option to install bootloader (Grub), and it can also be done manually as described in the Handbook's installation guide ( http://doc.slitaz.org/en:handbook:installation#grub-boot-loader ). But as there's clearly a problem somewhere, i could think of the following possible reasons:
1. For some exotic reason, your BIOS is configured to disallow booting the internal hdd (!?!). Quite unlikely and strange, but try going to the BIOS settings at startup, and check what the boot options/configurations are, just in case.
2. There's no boot code in the harddisk's MBR. Either no bootloader is installed at all, or it's just installed to your hard disk partition but not to MBR. Recommended reading: GRUB's documentation on installation to MBR. Find it on teh net. (The manual way of installing GRUB which is described in the SliTaz install handbook should work as is, but it's always good to read up...)
3. Some problem in the bootloader configurations.
Boot up with a live medium (e.g. your SliTaz cd),
mount the hd partition (recommended reading: mount command, e.g. http://doc.slitaz.org/en:handbook:commands#mount-a-partition-cd-or-usb-drive . Also, see below re: /mnt/target .)
(The partition is probably /dev/hda1 in your case, but might also be /dev/sda1 - look up which it is e.g. with Gparted, Mountbox, or the command [c]fdisk -l[/c] ),
and check the menu.lst in the directory <mountpoint-eg-mnt/target>/boot/grub . It should have an entry like the one in the installation guide.
If the menu.lst looks alright, check the device.map (recommended reading: look this up in the GRUB documentation). It's fairly unlikely that the problem is there though, menu.lst is the first place to check.
4. Faulty install. Try reinstalling GRUB to the harddisk via the LiveCD. See the manual install manual.
5. "I tried to go to the directory it said, but there's no "boot" directory in "/mnt/target"; in fact, there's nothing. Could this be a problem? When I attempted to install grub as it said, I was not successful."
/mnt/target is just a temporary directory created on /mnt for mounting the hd partition for the installation process. Try opening Mountbox to check which devices are mounted, and if /dev/hda1 is not, then mount it again on /mnt/target or whatever other temporary mountpoint you want to create:
[c]mkdir /mnt/ieatbunniespigletsandsmallkids[/c]
[c]mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/ieatbunniespigletsandsmallkids[/c]
then
[c]ls /mnt/ieatbunniespigletsandsmallkids[/c]
and you should see the filesystem on your harddisk partition. For as long as /dev/hda1 is mounted, you'll find your device.map and menu.lst in /mnt/ieatbunniespigletsandsmallkids/boot/grub. You can view and edit them, or create them if they are missing, with
[c]leafpad /mnt/ieatbunniespigletsandsmallkids/boot/grub/menu.lst[/c]
[c]leafpad /mnt/ieatbunniespigletsandsmallkids/boot/grub/device.map[/c]
when you're done checking and editing, unmount with
[c]umount /mnt/ieatbunniespigletsandsmallkids[/c]
or with Mountbox.
If you have more troubles, i'm happy to try to help out another noob 
- wolfpup
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@Brian
You wrote : I tried to go to the directory it said, but there's no "boot" directory in "/mnt/target"; in fact, there's nothing.
At the end of the installation, TazPanel unmounts the HD. So if you click in the file manager on /mnt and then select target... there will be nothing inside.
When TazPanel says : This is the contents of the device map /mnt/target/boot/grub/device.map.
the HD is still mounted.
If you want to check /boot/grub/device.map and /boot/grub/menu.lst, click in the left part of the file manager on your HD.
How does Gparted see your HD and please, and can you open /boot/grub/menu.lst with leafpad and post it ?
I saw twice after installations the line : root (hd2,0)
but the good root were : root (hd0,0)
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I went thru similar questions just recently as I was attempting to figure out how to make a "full HDD" install and along the way learned how to make the "frugal" install method work for me too.
Good news that you can boot and run the slitaz-4.0.iso.
Also good that you were able to install slitaz on a different rig with no issues.
Once thing to look at on that working rig is the "menu.lst" file which grub uses to boot slitaz after handoff from the BIOS. Also the device.map file, as mentioned in earlier posts.
At first glance it looks like grub-install is putting the bootloader code into the MBR. Maybe default install location of /boot/grub is different and grub in the MBR cannot find its config?
When I've done a full-on install to a partition, I've never had it mounted.
That way when grub-install does its magic
-- it will install to the main MBR on the only drive
-- create (or use) the first partition on the drive, whether /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1
-- make the "/boot" and "/boot/grub" directories onto this drive
Since you have just one hard drive installed (and one partiton), the drive should be device /dev/hda based on what you listed above (and grub-install found it there).
Once the install process is finished, if you then mount this partition to your live system (say at /mnt), you'll be able to view (or should be able to) the /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst file. Editing this file with the correct parameters (most will be done for you). Here is what mine looks like (I renamed the kernel image filename):
title slitaz4 persistent
root(hd0,0)
kernel /boot/slitaz-4-kernel.img root=/dev/hda1 vga=normal
found here: http://doc.slitaz.org/en:handbook:installation
(hd0,0) should correspond to /dev/hda1 unless there is something different listed in the device.map file (say if you are using the secondary IDE port rather than the primary, could assign the drive to /dev/hdc on some older machines).
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