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When you shut down DSL you are given the chance to save changes. If you are unchecking that to shut down, it won't save your settings.

Light travels faster than the speed of sound. Thats why certain people appear bright till they open their mouths. "Where is the 'any' key?" – Homer Simpson, in response to the message, "Press any key" Registered Linux User # 475019

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Persistence

Light travels faster than the speed of sound. Thats why certain people appear bright till they open their mouths. "Where is the 'any' key?" – Homer Simpson, in response to the message, "Press any key" Registered Linux User # 475019

Thanks, I will give it a shot. I might already have 4.2.5 though. If I stupidly hit "yes" on that question (without internet working), will it never ask me again? I am thinking that might have happened.

When you installed DsLinux, did you format (in general) your partitions like this so you would have space to save your changes. And no you don't need a internet connection to save your changes that I know of.

# Create a new partition (hda1) for holding the original DSL image file. Make it a primary partition with a size of 55 MB. Place it at the beginning of the drive, and make it bootable.
# Select "hda1" and make it type 83 (Linux). Select "Write" to write it to the hard drive.
# Select the Free Space and create a new partition for the swap drive. Make it a primary partition with a size equal to double the RAM. Place it at the end of the space.
# Select hda2 and make it type 82 (Linux swap). Select "Write" to write it to the hard drive.
# Select the Free Space and create a new partition for the main drive. Make it a primary drive, and use the default size (rest of the hard drive space).
# Select hda3 and make it type 83 (Linux). Select "Write" to write it to the hard drive.
# Select "Quit" to exit cfdisk.
# Format the partitions. Enter the following commands:
sudo mke2fs /dev/hda1
sudo mke2fs /dev/hda3
sudo mkswap /dev/hda2

Light travels faster than the speed of sound. Thats why certain people appear bright till they open their mouths. "Where is the 'any' key?" – Homer Simpson, in response to the message, "Press any key" Registered Linux User # 475019

well, I use a 166 MHz P1 MMX with a 6 gig hd. I let dsl do the formatting and was sure to allow it to make a swap drive. I have never seen a "shutdown box". When I go to shutdown, it leaves the fluxbox and shows in text all the crap it is doing to shutdown. I did make a 512 mb ram stick my backup. so it automatically backs up to that stick durring shutdown and restores from there too. maybe that is the problem. but still, no 'shutdown box' like you said with a box to check save changes.

Well, I used a Win98 boot floppy to fdisk the computer and tried to create a small active dos partition for a swap leaving the rest as an extended. Couldn't get two active partitions to take. Couldn't get even two drive letters (logical). Didn't work too well. I would almost successfully get damn small linux to install, only to find out on reboot that it would not boot. I reinstalled linux successfully only after formatting the hard-drive, making almost the whole thing the active dos partition. I used my pen-drive to restore it, so I lost none of my stuff.

It still doesn't ask me nothing when I click shutdown. It just goes to text mode and kills everything and shuts down. I saw the message once when I had it running with that swap partition in place. I used the system tool "setup DOS Swapfile". Of course, the system would not boot and kept asking for my 98 boot floppy.

I guess I could try an actual partitioning tool again, but I hate having the extra time added to by boot time when those tools are installed; plus they overwrite the lilo bootloader (grub never works on this laptop). Then I can't get it to boot.

I downloaded these 2 , md5sum to check download and iso for O/S

File:dsl-4.2.5.iso 49726 KB 01/28/2008 12:00:00 AM
File:dsl-4.2.5.iso.md5.txt

Got them from here. You will have to reinstall from cd.

ftp://ftp.oss.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/

If you use this tutorial for install you can't go wrong with it.

http://www.jasonhsu.com/linux-frugal.html

Light travels faster than the speed of sound. Thats why certain people appear bright till they open their mouths. "Where is the 'any' key?" – Homer Simpson, in response to the message, "Press any key" Registered Linux User # 475019

I figured, what the heck. Might as well do the whole process. I downloaded Darik's boot and nuke (love it... bye bye win98 boot floppy). wiped the drive. THen I did the frugal install as on teh instructions above. Well, it was all going precisely as described until step 19. Seems there is a crapload of questions asked by the frugal install between steps 19 and 20. Never saw anything resembling step 22. I used the lilo frugal install.

When it rebooted (minus the cd) the computer said the typical 'no operating system found'. I am trying with grub now, but grub never did like my laptop.

The grub booter even gives you the choice of selecting fb1024x768 which is the option I normally use. But regardless of whether I select DSL or DSL fb1024x769 or not it boots into "undreadable mode" as I call it. Funny. Running it live off the CDROM worked fine as long as I used fb1024x768 (entered before booting).

I have run the last option on grub which basically walks you through the setup again as it loads the dsl image into ramdisk. Selected xvesa, and no good. Unreadable. Now trying the other option. It is going in some loop where it never gets to the desktop now. Fun.

Tried to edit the boot line before booting, deleting the vga=7xx and ensuring the fb1024x768 was entered (it was already there).

then it continued like I was setting up hardware. I chose the OTHER option to xvesa (can't remember).

i then get this:

fatal IO error 104 on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

Nice. And at that the computer stops doing anything. I am installing Feather next.

Well, feather was no better. Easier to install (if you call not booting to desktop "installed"), but flawed. Did not look as good as DSL.

I am just going to have to suffer. I am reinstalling DSL and will live with its shortcomings. Sucks to not be able to set a background. Sucks to have to hit the Prism2 every day. But I guess for free it rocks.

Linux kicks window's ass only because it is free. It is not less buggy. It is not more attractive. It is certainly not easy to learn or install. But at least you don't have to pay for it. And it is a LOT faster on this old machine than Windows 2000 while having more features than Windows 98.

Sorry for turning this into a blog in the end. I will be forever thankful for your assistance. At least you showed me how to set a swap drive and introduced me to Dariks boot and nuke, replacing a 98 boot disk I had been using. I will be discontinuing my need for this thread.