Any Linux LiveCD with pcmcia.img file?

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Am looking for a way to boot a Linux LiveCD from floppy on my
Panasonic Toughbook CF25. This laptop has no internal CD-ROM, so I
have to load the OS either from a parallel port (Backpack) or a pcmcia
SCSI adapter (apa1460 SlimSCSI, which requires the aha152X SCSI
driver).

So far I've tried Knoppix and PCLinuxOS. Knoppix provides a boot.img
to allow a floppy boot, but no pcmcia.img, so the boot module searches
the hard drive partitions, but doesn't see the SCSI CDROM drive on the
pcmcia card. PCLinuxOS doesn't even provide a boot.img. There is a
Knoppix pcmcia_modules.img offered at www.luell.com, but it fails on
my system with the message "NTLDR not found".

I've asked the authors of Knoppix and PCLinuxOS about providing the
necessary images, but no response to date.

I see there are several other LiveCDs available now, but hesitate to
download and burn more ISOs just to find out if they have the required
images.

I'm guessing that MandrakeMove is a LiveCD? If so, does it have both
boot.img and pcmcia.img files included?




Achim



axethetax

 

[Klein]

Try asking at the forums on Puppy Linux or DamnSmallLinux. Both are tiny,
live Linux distros.

As far as not getting an answer from the Knoppix people, they're busy. So
try the forums, search/read first, then ask and hope to get responses from
serious users.

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Try asking at the forums on Puppy Linux or DamnSmallLinux. Both are tiny,
live Linux distros.

Not interested in "tiny" distros,thanks,.

I want to get a full-sized, mainline distro like Debian or Mandrake on
my laptop, but I'd like to test drive it without risking (more) major
damage to my Windows partitions, and or wasting my time because of
lacking hardware support.

As far as not getting an answer from the Knoppix people, they're busy.

Well, I've only tried communicating with Klaus Knopper and Texstar.
They're not too busy to answer other questions in the forums. But in
any case, I know the answer in those instances, because both offer a
package list text file, that shows there IS no pcmcia.img (and no
boot.img in the case of PCLinuxOS).

Unfortunately, I haven't found any such information online for
MandrakeMove, and it seems nuts to download and burn a 700MB distro in
order to read a 30KB text file.

So
try the forums, search/read first, then ask and hope to get responses from
serious users.

What makes you think I haven't done all of the above? Hell, I'm the
most frequent poster in the only Knoppix NG I've been able to find.

As for "serious users" - I'm wondering whether there ARE any? People
have posted about the wonders of MandrakeMove, but none have bothered
to answer my simple question posted in the same forum.

BTW, the pcmcia support question has been asked by others in at least
one LiveCD forum, and remains unanswered there too.

I suppose my search would be facilitated if there were one central
forum or website intended to cover all available LiveCD distros. If it
exists, I haven't found it yet.




Achim



axethetax

 

[Joachim Ziebs]

Hi Achim!

I'm guessing that MandrakeMove is a LiveCD? If so, does it have
both boot.img and pcmcia.img files included?

Hm, let me have a look.
Can't find them on the CD right now. However, MandrakeMove was able to
use the network PCMCIA card in my laptop.

Greetings,

Joachim

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Hi Achim!


Hm, let me have a look.
Can't find them on the CD right now. However, MandrakeMove was able to
use the network PCMCIA card in my laptop.

Not the same thing, unfortunately. All the distros have pcmcia
support, but you can't access it until the distro is installed, and
you can't install the distro without pcmcia support if your
installation relies on a pcmcia SCSI adapter.

That's why I need both a boot.img to boot the laptop into Linux, and a
pcmcia.img file for the auxiliary floppy that will provide pcmcia
support to access the SCSI cdrom attached to the pcmcia adapter. Only
then can the complete OS be installed.

The situation is more hopeful with Mandrake, because I know that
there's both a boot.img and a pcmciadd.img on the Mandrake 9.1 ISO. I
used them to install MDRK9.1 on my laptop (unfortunately, it didn't
install very well, and between the inaccessibility of Hardrake from
KDE and the failure to install my ethernet card, I was stuck).
Perhaps, even if there is no boot.img or pcmcia.img on the
MandrakeMove LiveCD, the MDRK9.1 floppies would work?

If there is no boot.img in the MandrakeMove ISO, would you try the
MDRK9.1 boot.img with MandrakeMove (ie., make the boot floppy, disable
CDROM boot on the desktop, boot the desktop with the floppy)? If the
boot floppy manages to load MandrakeMove, then I'm almost certain the
pcmciadd floppy would work as well.

I've already tried this with the first version of PCLinuxOS, but the
Mandrake boot floppy wouldn't work with Texstar's LiveCD.


Achim



axethetax

 

[Joachim Ziebs]

Hi Achim!

That's why I need both a boot.img to boot the laptop into Linux, and
a pcmcia.img file for the auxiliary floppy that will provide pcmcia
support to access the SCSI cdrom attached to the pcmcia adapter.
Only then can the complete OS be installed.

You do have a network card, right?
You might be able to use a Suse boot floppy: boot from the floppy and
choose a network install. This would download all packages from the
net (as Suse does not allow ISO downloads).
Of course this will be painful if you are on a metered modem access to
the net.

The situation is more hopeful with Mandrake, because I know that
there's both a boot.img and a pcmciadd.img on the Mandrake 9.1 ISO.

I'm using 9.2.
Have you tried that?

Greetings,

Joachim

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Hi Joachim,

You do have a network card, right?

I've got two, one is an Ositech Jack of Diamonds Trump JDX2 10606A
which is supported by Windows and Unix, but not Linux (go figure!).
This is the one that failed to install under MDRK9.1.

I've since bought an older, more vanilla T-10 card, a Megahertz M1144,
in the hope this would be supported by Linux. I haven't had a chance
to try it yet, and I confess I haven't checked it against the hardware
compatibility lists yet either (I haven't found these lists to be
reliable, and don't have much confidence in them).

You might be able to use a Suse boot floppy: boot from the floppy and
choose a network install. This would download all packages from the
net (as Suse does not allow ISO downloads).

Of course this will be painful if you are on a metered modem access to
the net.

I've got ADSL, but this would be a last resort. I'd like to go with a
LiveCD to know the OS will run acceptably on my system before doing a
HD install. My last tryst with Mandrake left one of my Windows
partitions corrupted.

I'm using 9.2.
Have you tried that?

No, but if MandrakeMove is based on 9.2, the boot.img and pcmciadd.img
files are even more likely to work with it. Does the 9.2 iso still
offer these files (I know Red Hat 8.0 left them out completely,
although the documentation stated they were available in the Images
folder).


regards,

Achim

PS. I'm baffled and disturbed by the LiveCD pioneers' failure to
provide this support. I wonder if they're trying to curry favour with
Intel by encourageing the abandonment of older PCs, or is it just to
limit trouble reports from users with less powerful CPUs and/or more
limited storage?

Whatever the reason, I find it extremely churlish of them to waste
other people's time and efforts by failing to enunciate the decision
to omit such support, especially since Linux has traditionally vaunted
itself on supporting older hardware. Nowadays it seems one has to walk
a tightrope between systems that are "too old" and those that are
"too new".




Achim



axethetax

 

[Joachim Ziebs]

Hi Achim!

I've got two, one is an Ositech Jack of Diamonds Trump JDX2 10606A
which is supported by Windows and Unix, but not Linux (go figure!).

No figure.
:-(

No, but if MandrakeMove is based on 9.2, the boot.img and
pcmciadd.img files are even more likely to work with it.

Yes, MandrakeMove is based on MDK9.2.

Does the
9.2 iso still offer these files (I know Red Hat 8.0 left them out
completely, although the documentation stated they were available in
the Images folder).

I just took a look in /boot on MDK9.2 CD1:
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Sep 26 11:31 alternatives/
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 blank.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 cdrom.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03
hdcdrom_usb.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 hd.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 383 Sep 23 12:03 MD5SUM
-r--r--r-- 7 root root 80976 Sep 10 2002
memtest-x86.bin
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03
network_gigabit_usb.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 network.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 pcmcia.img

And I had a look in the README:

---
Old SCSI adapters
-----------------

We removed seldom used modules because they are large (thus they
won't even fit anymore in only one other.img floppy) and mostly
about old hardware. You have a solution though:

- create a traditional "cdrom.img" floppy

- create an ext2 floppy with command:

mke2fs /dev/fd0

- find your driver in the kernel-BOOT package; for example, the
driver might be:


/lib/modules/<kernel-version>BOOT/kernel/3rdparty/dc395x_trm/dc395x_trm.o.gz

- copy it unzipped on the ext2 floppy with the command or its
equivalent for another driver:

zcat

/mnt/floppy/dc395x_trm.o

- also copy (unzipped) the dependencies for that module (such as
scsi_mod.o for example; there might be others, check in the
modules.dep file)

- boot the cdrom.img floppy with F1 then "linux expert", it will
allow you to put the floppy and load the modules from there, in
dependencies order of course (scsi_mod.o first, etc)
---

I hope that this helps.

Greetings,

Joachim

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

HI Joachim,

On Sun, 22 Feb 2004 21:28:39 +0100, Joachim Ziebs

....

Achim Nolcken Lohse wrote:
....

Yes, MandrakeMove is based on MDK9.2.
.....
I just took a look in /boot on MDK9.2 CD1:
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Sep 26 11:31 alternatives/
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 blank.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 cdrom.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03
hdcdrom_usb.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 hd.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 383 Sep 23 12:03 MD5SUM
-r--r--r-- 7 root root 80976 Sep 10 2002
memtest-x86.bin
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03
network_gigabit_usb.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 network.img
-r--r--r-- 6 root root 1474560 Sep 23 12:03 pcmcia.img

Are you sure you found that on the installation CD? On my CD1 of
Mandrake 9.1, there's no "boot" folder anywhere, and the image files
you list above are all in the "images" folder in the root directory.

And I had a look in the README:

---
Old SCSI adapters
-----------------

We removed seldom used modules because they are large (thus they
won't even fit anymore in only one other.img floppy) and mostly
about old hardware.

How strange. I couldn't find any mention of SCSI or old drivers at all
in the readme.txt of Mandrake9.1. It's not clear to me whether they
changed the content. Is there still a dosutils folder with
rawrite.exe? You'd think that, if they had to remove scads of old
drivers they'd at least provide a list of the ones removed.

You have a solution though:

- create a traditional "cdrom.img" floppy

- create an ext2 floppy with command:

mke2fs /dev/fd0

- find your driver in the kernel-BOOT package; for example, the
driver might be:


/lib/modules/<kernel-version>BOOT/kernel/3rdparty/dc395x_trm/dc395x_trm.o.gz

- copy it unzipped on the ext2 floppy with the command or its
equivalent for another driver:

zcat


- also copy (unzipped) the dependencies for that module (such as
scsi_mod.o for example; there might be others, check in the
modules.dep file)

- boot the cdrom.img floppy with F1 then "linux expert", it will
allow you to put the floppy and load the modules from there, in
dependencies order of course (scsi_mod.o first, etc)

Thanks. It might, if the same procedure will work equally well in
Knoppix. Obviously, you have to have a working Linux system to follow
the procedure. It doesn't even refer to the installation disk. I'm
wondering how they expect someone to install Linux this way if they
need boot support from one of the missing drivers to access the
installation CD?

The question is whether:

1) there's a boot.img and a pcmcia.img file on the MandrakeMove
LiveCD, or

2) whether these two files are still to be found in the images folder
on CD1 of Mandrake9.2

3) if the answer to #1 is no, then whether one can boot MandrakeMove
with the boot floppy made from MDRK9.2's boot.img

4) if the answer to #1 or #3 is yes, then one could try the floppy
produced by the pcmcia.img file to see whether the SCSI adapter is
still supported

5) if the answer to #4 is no, then it would be time to try out the
procedure above (with Knoppix, since I don't have an installed or
LiveCD version of Mandrake at the moment).

Is it even remotely believable that Mandrake would put would-be users
to all this trouble just to save a measly Megabyte or two of space on
their distribution CDs or on their website? It's clear to me that
they're deliberately blowing off users with older hardware, but aren't
honest enough to says so.

regards,

Achim




Achim



axethetax

 

[Joachim Ziebs]

Hi Achim!

Are you sure you found that on the installation CD? On my CD1 of
Mandrake 9.1, there's no "boot" folder anywhere, and the image files
you list above are all in the "images" folder in the root directory.

Yes, I did.

How strange. I couldn't find any mention of SCSI or old drivers at
all in the readme.txt of Mandrake9.1. It's not clear to me whether
they changed the content. Is there still a dosutils folder with
rawrite.exe? You'd think that, if they had to remove scads of old
drivers they'd at least provide a list of the ones removed.

I'm not the person to answer that one, sorry.

Thanks. It might, if the same procedure will work equally well in
Knoppix. Obviously, you have to have a working Linux system to
follow the procedure. It doesn't even refer to the installation
disk. I'm wondering how they expect someone to install Linux this
way if they need boot support from one of the missing drivers to
access the installation CD?

With a friend running Linux?

The question is whether:

[...]

These questions are better asked in alt.[...].mandrake.
There are a few experts there to help you more that I could do.

Greetings,

Joachim

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Hi Joachim,

Hi Achim!

Achim Nolcken Lohse wrote:
....

With a friend running Linux?

Hmm. I wonder how many people have a friend who runs Linux, especially
if they're trying it for the first time? I suppose in a university or
computing environment, it might be possible to find an acquaintance
willing to help, but most people are unlikely to find such help within
their social circle.

The people who talked me into trying Linux gave up on it themselves
years ago. And I don't happen to know anyone in my small community of
a few thousand people who's running it.

The question is whether:

[...]

These questions are better asked in alt.[...].mandrake.
There are a few experts there to help you more that I could do.

No doubt, but the "help" I get there is usually limited to being
called a "wintroll". Anyway, thanks very much for your efforts.

regards,

Achim


Achim



axethetax

 

[Joachim Ziebs]

Hi Achim!

Hmm. I wonder how many people have a friend who runs Linux,
especially if they're trying it for the first time? I suppose in a
university or computing environment, it might be possible to find an
acquaintance willing to help, but most people are unlikely to find
such help within their social circle.

Enlarge your social circle:
http://www.linux.org/groups/

There might be a group near you.

Greetings,

Joachim

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Hi Achim!


Enlarge your social circle:
http://www.linux.org/groups/

There might be a group near you.

There's a group in Calgary, a three hour drive from my house. I only
visit there every few months or so, and usually don't have time for
anything but essential chores.

Last time I checked, they hadn't had a meeting in half a year (it was
listed as their "upcoming event" as I recall). But they seem to have
been revitalized, so I've sent them an e-mail to see if they know of
any users in my vicinity.

thanks for prodding me


Achim



axethetax

 

[Joachim Ziebs]

Hi Achim!

Enlarge your social circle:
http://www.linux.org/groups/

There might be a group near you.

[...]

Last time I checked, they hadn't had a meeting in half a year (it
was listed as their "upcoming event" as I recall). But they seem to
have been revitalized, so I've sent them an e-mail to see if they
know of any users in my vicinity.

thanks for prodding me

No problem. Any time.


Before I forget. Your name sounds German so I think you might as well
understand German. Hop over to www.mandrakeuser.de, too.
They are extremely friendly and helpful.

Greetings,

Joachim

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Before I forget. Your name sounds German so I think you might as well
understand German. Hop over to www.mandrakeuser.de, too.
They are extremely friendly and helpful.

I can read it, hard to know exactly how well I understand, or how well
I'm understood, especially in PC jargon.

I had a look at the forums and did a couple of searches, followed some
links that took me to the MDRK website, download mirrors, etc..
Nothing found that addresses my problem, though. May try posting a
message there later.

BTW - my e-mail to the Calgary Linux User's Group, sent to a link on
their "Newbies" page, got an autoresponse with a redirection link to a
"new" website. I followed the link, and ended up at the same Newbies
page with the same defunct e-mail address....





Achim



axethetax