LINUX ON LAPTOP

LINUX ON LAPTOP

[Michael Weaver]

Hi!
Today I tried to install Redhat 7.2 on my Compaq laptop.
With the use of the floppy disk we created of my system files, my personal
assistant or support worker managed to boot to DOS and with Fips managed to
partition my drive.
However, my CDROM drive wouldn't boot when the first Installation CD was
inserted so he had to use rawwrite to create a boot image disk for Redhat.
We managed to start the installation for Redhat but the problem was we kept
getting error messages so we had to terminate the installation.  Also my
Compaq laptop is one where the CDROM drive and floppy drive are
interchangable which means you can't run both at the same time, you have to
have either the CDROM drive or floppy drive.
Could anyone possibly give me any advice?
Could it be that 7.2 doesn't support laptops and that the higher 7.3 version
of redhat or a different flavour of Linux should take me through the
installation without any problems?
The installation problems occured after the welcoming screen for Redhat
Linux.
Will I have any problem wif I ever get to the part where I will have to
switch drives from my Boot image disk to my CDROM to continue the
installation of Redhat?

Re: LINUX ON LAPTOP

[Janina Sajka]

I would doubt that you could swap devices to proceed with the
installation.

If you have a means to create .iso images on your hd of the two
7.2 installation cdroms, you can install from a boot floppy using
the iso images.

What exactly happens when you boot to the CDROM? You do do it
from  a cold start, right?

On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Michael Weaver wrote:

> Hi!
> Today I tried to install Redhat 7.2 on my Compaq laptop.
> With the use of the floppy disk we created of my system files, my personal
> assistant or support worker managed to boot to DOS and with Fips managed to
> partition my drive.
> However, my CDROM drive wouldn't boot when the first Installation CD was
> inserted so he had to use rawwrite to create a boot image disk for Redhat.
> We managed to start the installation for Redhat but the problem was we kept
> getting error messages so we had to terminate the installation.  Also my
> Compaq laptop is one where the CDROM drive and floppy drive are
> interchangable which means you can't run both at the same time, you have to
> have either the CDROM drive or floppy drive.
> Could anyone possibly give me any advice?
> Could it be that 7.2 doesn't support laptops and that the higher 7.3 version
> of redhat or a different flavour of Linux should take me through the
> installation without any problems?
> The installation problems occured after the welcoming screen for Redhat
> Linux.
> Will I have any problem wif I ever get to the part where I will have to
> switch drives from my Boot image disk to my CDROM to continue the
> installation of Redhat?
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina@afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org

Re: LINUX ON LAPTOP

[Gil Andre]

Michael,

When posting an help request, I really think you should
also provide more information. For instance, what are the
error messages? What are they related to? What is the model
of your laptop? Its memory? Hard disk size?

Nevertheless, here are some quick answers:

1. Try another distribution than RedHat. For instance,
Slackware or SuSE. If you have to stick to RedHat, you
may as well stick to 7.2, as I don't think the problem
you describe is distribution-related. For your
information, I installed RedHat 7.2 without any problem
on my IBM Thinkpad laptop -- but it's probably a much
newer machine than yours.

2. On many laptops (not all), there is a special cable
that allow you to connect your floppy drive to the 
parallel port. Do you have one of these? If that is the
case, you can boot off the floppy and use the CDROM
drive at the same time.

3. The error messages may be due to the fact that RedHat
installation needs a second floppy to complete the boot
process. Try to refer to the RedHat documentation for
this. This second floppy, for instance, is necessary for
Slackware. I think that Mandrake also requires this.

4. Check that your laptop BIOS can boot off the CDROM
drive instead of booting from the floppy drive. That 
would solve all your problems. This is what I used for
my laptop, and it's really the easiest way to do it.

5. Before installing anything, please check that your
laptop is supported by searching for its brand and model
on the following site: http://www.linux-laptop.net
(Just doing this will probably save you a lot of time
and effort). Please also check with Compaq Tech Support
and ask them if RedHat is supported on that model. On
the site I mentioned, you also have tons of advice to
install Linux on just about every machine you can think
of.

6. If all else fails, but you have network access once
you have booted the RedHat floppy, try installing the
entire RedHat distribution over the network. This, of
course, requires you to have a second computer to create
an FTP, or NFS, server. Not the easiest way to do it,
but it works. Any machine will do, as long as it has
a network and your laptop has a network card as well.

That's about it. Hope this helps!

-- 

Gil Andre          gandre@arkeia.com
         Technical Writer
Arkeia Corp.   http://www.arkeia.com

Re: LINUX ON LAPTOP

[Pawel (Paul) Loba]

Hi:
I don't mean to be agressive but if you would read installation manual for 
Red Hat you could find several way of installation  of it in your 
particular sytuation. First, if you have sighted assistent to do it, if I 
recall this correctly, you can initiate RH installation from DOS prompt, I 
remember doing this at least with release 6.2. Another question, have you 
prepared installation disks based on pcmcia.img and pcmciadd.img?

Linux is the best OS on earth but required a lot of reading and from my 
experience I can tell you that it is not avoidable. [green]

Good luck.
Pawel.

 On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Michael Weaver wrote:

> Hi!
> Today I tried to install Redhat 7.2 on my Compaq laptop.
> With the use of the floppy disk we created of my system files, my personal
> assistant or support worker managed to boot to DOS and with Fips managed to
> partition my drive.
> However, my CDROM drive wouldn't boot when the first Installation CD was
> inserted so he had to use rawwrite to create a boot image disk for Redhat.
> We managed to start the installation for Redhat but the problem was we kept
> getting error messages so we had to terminate the installation.  Also my
> Compaq laptop is one where the CDROM drive and floppy drive are
> interchangable which means you can't run both at the same time, you have to
> have either the CDROM drive or floppy drive.
> Could anyone possibly give me any advice?
> Could it be that 7.2 doesn't support laptops and that the higher 7.3 version
> of redhat or a different flavour of Linux should take me through the
> installation without any problems?
> The installation problems occured after the welcoming screen for Redhat
> Linux.
> Will I have any problem wif I ever get to the part where I will have to
> switch drives from my Boot image disk to my CDROM to continue the
> installation of Redhat?
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> 

Re: LINUX ON LAPTOP

[Janina Sajka]

Pawel is correct. It may well be the way to go to begin the
installation from DOS.

I'm not so sure that the pcmcia.img file will be needed, however.
You'd only need that if you need to actually use a pcmcia device
during the installation. But, if that increases your options for
installation media, by all means use pcmcia.


On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Pawel (Paul) Loba wrote:

> Hi:
> I don't mean to be agressive but if you would read installation manual for 
> Red Hat you could find several way of installation  of it in your 
> particular sytuation. First, if you have sighted assistent to do it, if I 
> recall this correctly, you can initiate RH installation from DOS prompt, I 
> remember doing this at least with release 6.2. Another question, have you 
> prepared installation disks based on pcmcia.img and pcmciadd.img?
> 
> Linux is the best OS on earth but required a lot of reading and from my 
> experience I can tell you that it is not avoidable. [green]
> 
> Good luck.
> Pawel.
> 
>  On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Michael Weaver wrote:
> 
> > Hi!
> > Today I tried to install Redhat 7.2 on my Compaq laptop.
> > With the use of the floppy disk we created of my system files, my personal
> > assistant or support worker managed to boot to DOS and with Fips managed to
> > partition my drive.
> > However, my CDROM drive wouldn't boot when the first Installation CD was
> > inserted so he had to use rawwrite to create a boot image disk for Redhat.
> > We managed to start the installation for Redhat but the problem was we kept
> > getting error messages so we had to terminate the installation.  Also my
> > Compaq laptop is one where the CDROM drive and floppy drive are
> > interchangable which means you can't run both at the same time, you have to
> > have either the CDROM drive or floppy drive.
> > Could anyone possibly give me any advice?
> > Could it be that 7.2 doesn't support laptops and that the higher 7.3 version
> > of redhat or a different flavour of Linux should take me through the
> > installation without any problems?
> > The installation problems occured after the welcoming screen for Redhat
> > Linux.
> > Will I have any problem wif I ever get to the part where I will have to
> > switch drives from my Boot image disk to my CDROM to continue the
> > installation of Redhat?
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Blinux-list mailing list
> > Blinux-list@redhat.com
> > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina@afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org