Re: What's the Dealio with initrd, etc/fstab, initrd.img inittab, vmlinuz, grub and partitions ???


Douglas Mayne wrote:
On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 07:00:47 -0800, iforone wrote:
Really? ;-)

I know, I know, - no need to rub it in ^_ ^

Allow me to preface with system info, and install and kernel info;

SYSTEM;
PII, 350MHz / Intel 440BX / 192MB RAM /AGP nVidia TNT Pro(32MB)/
PCI Ethernet NIC / PCI 3Com USRobotic Winmodem / Onboard Ensoniq
AudioPCI 64D SB emulation / USB 1.1 only (onboard) / etc...

Not enough horsepower (CPU and RAM) for KDE to run smoothly.

See last comment...;-)

Here are the basic rules for disc partitioning (in the PC world):

it's funny - I know all that stuff for years now - just the Ext'd
(under Linux) was throwing me...as you know, Windoze doesn't have
"tools" like those found in *nix.

Note: comment inline.

I apologize - I don't understand that (inline?), if it's unimportant,
don't bother ;-)

Caveat: I am not running Debian.

Understood

The main problem you are having is performance? I would expect that
machine to have trouble with KDE. Personally, I find that KDE has too
much "eye-candy" for my taste.

So do I - but not being that CLI savvy in Linux yet and basically not
knowing how to even start another GUI (wm, icewm, enlightenment,
fluxbox, etc) I had no choice. I would MUCH prefer to learn it from the
Admin perspective. I'll refrain from further CLI vs GUI comments for
now ;-). Heck; I only recently figured out how vim works (atleast well
enough to edit the visudo / sudoers file)...now I here of nano(used it
a few times already, nice) and pico and emacs (heard much ado about
it) -- also I want to get to know mc better, yet I don't even know how
to differentiate between a Windows Manager, a File Manager, an ncurses
based editor, a tty, etc *sigh*. I just found that X-Server is a GUI
Server(?) meant for networking/multiple users at once and one can have
MANY sessions open at once, and that either kdm, xdm, gdm can manage
(?)...oh boy - I can't even get 2 wm's/fm's going at once


You can change the default window manager globally (for every user on your
machine), or locally (for an individual user).


Oh - so I just need to create more users? perhaps using adduser ?

See my issue is what is all this UID, SUID 1000, Umask, etc...I mean My
1 default $USER I created and use can't access things and see things
I'd like it to easily...I'd like to understand Why not first - so I
don;t keep making New Bad User configurations. Should my CD and DVD be
'rw', rather than 'ro' in /etc/fstab ?? -- should the my '/' partition
be listed as ro ?? as it is now ? Why is there this errors=remount at
/dev/hda7 ?

/dev/hda7 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

and what the heck are the trailing 0 and 1 for ?
oh brother...

Back on point for me;

I'd guess first and foremost, I'd like to understand IF and WHY and HOW
I can use a real installed kernel (kernel-image) ? it seems I'm booting
off a small kernel image WITHOUT actually having a kernel installed ??
does
initrd.img-2.6.8-2-386
call
vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-386

or something like that ??
Should I just run Kpackage and install the appropriate
"kernel-image"(2.6.8, i386, approx 50MB ??)

Thank goodness for kpackage - 'aptitude' gives me strange "boxes as
characters" and as borders for window frames and menus - and 'apt-get'
is ok, but I'll never remember all the commands (and package names),
and there's s-o-o-o many packages...

My PCMCIA (and/or EISA) needs to be fixed (though I have neither ISA,
nor PCMCIA devices, but this Intel South Bridge (82371AB/EB PIIX4E)
certainly likes to have it's support) - I chose NOT to install PCMCIA
(passed it up during install) because this is a Desktop, not a Laptop,
with seemingly no PCMCIA - BUT, when Knoppix Live (v3.6, 2.6.7 Kernel)
was booting (both from LiveCD /and/ when installed to HDD), there was
definitely PCMCIA support and "hotplug" detecting and configuring
devices -- Since installing Debian I get these errors (similar only,
since I can't figure out WHERE to get AlL that Boot screen Info from -
I tried 'syslogd', and 'messages' many other files, but 'dmesg' seems
as close as I can get);

[...]
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:07.2[D] -> GSI 9 (level, low) -> IRQ 9
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: irq 9, io base 00001020
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
agpgart: Detected an Intel 440BX Chipset.
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 149M
agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xf8000000
cpci_hotplug: CompactPCI Hot Plug Core version: 0.2
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5

start Failures;

pciehp: acpi_pciehprm:\_SB_.PCI0 evaluate _BBN fail=0x5
pciehp: acpi_pciehprm:get_device PCI ROOT HID fail=0x5
shpchp: acpi_shpchprm:\_SB_.PCI0 evaluate _BBN fail=0x5
shpchp: acpi_shpchprm:get_device PCI ROOT HID fail=0x5
input: PC Speaker
inserting floppy driver for 2.6.8-2-386
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
parport: PnPBIOS parport detected.
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778), irq 7, dma 3
[PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,ECP,DMA]
eth0: DSPCFG accepted after 0 usec.
[...]


ACPI is working fine and before I placed those apm= and acpi= entries
into GRUB entries, I still had the same two FATAL: errors about
*hotplug* .ko's during Bootup...I recall the PATH to problem files are
here;

The FATAL bootup messages mention files (.ko) found in here;

lib/modules/2.6.8-2-386/kernel/drivers/pci/hotplug

$ ls -l
total 540
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33393 2005-08-16 11:13 acpiphp.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8997 2005-08-16 11:13 cpcihp_generic.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9895 2005-08-16 11:13 cpcihp_zt5550.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 82017 2005-08-16 11:13 cpqphp.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6079 2005-08-16 11:13 fakephp.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 112573 2005-08-16 11:13 ibmphp.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108788 2005-08-16 11:13 pciehp.ko <<---
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 40088 2005-08-16 11:13 pci_hotplug.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 111944 2005-08-16 11:13 shpchp.ko <<---

The arrows point to specifically the two I can recall (pciehp.ko and
shpchp.ko)

So how do I go about giving this system PCMCIA support ?? Through
'make' 'modprobe' ??
Do I have to Re-Run the Debian Installer from CD ??

I am not sure of the exact
specifics of Debian for the global change, but start by looking in the
directory /etc/X11/xinit. On my system there is a symbolic link, xinitrc,
in that directory which points to the global default.

The shell script "xinitrc" is present but no symlink there;

$ ls -al /etc/X11/xinit
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2006-02-15 07:54 .
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2006-02-22 23:25 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 224 2005-09-01 18:34 xinitrc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 53 2005-09-01 18:38 xserverrc


To change it locally (for one user), copy a file from that directory to
the user's home directory, as appropriate. For example, to switch to the
blackbox window manager, I would type this command:

doug@localhost$ cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.blackbox ~/.xinitrc

Ok - Thank you - I'll mark this area as "bookmarked" lol.., so I can
refer to them when I'm done with atleast a stable/solid hardware
foundation to build on - does the tilde ' ~ ' mean $HOME ?
-or- $USER ? I think /. means root and hidden(?) in this instance?

Partitions...
AFAIK, the original idea for allowing multiple partitions to be mounted as
directories (/home, /usr) was to allow multiple devices to be used. That
way, the 4G needed for /usr could be assigned to a 4G SCSI disk. This
detail is less important now, because of the dramatic increase in disk
size. There is still one obvious exception for continued use of disk
partitioning- it is useful for your /home directory to be on a partition
by itself. That way, your files are segregated from the OS and this
creates three classes of backups: /home only, OS only, or combined
complete backup.

--
Douglas Mayne

Mi Capito me thinks - the /homey is good ;)

Thank you for your help and support. so far, I really appreciate it --
I didn't want to cross-post either, and I thought of posting (also?) in
linux.debian..user, but after the original dissertation, I forgot
(doh!). Oh dear, look at how long this post is .....(where's Enrique?
O_O )

.

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