Re: [gNewSense-users] Tips for installing on old machines

[Jay]

No, I did not activate the swap partition manually. I believe that the reason why this worked in my case is because I did not need to modify the partition layout during install, nor did I need to format any partitions. Try using the gparted live CD or similar to set up partitions and format before you try to boot from the gNewSense live CD. This way, the swap partition can remain active throughout the process since the system will not need to umount that device to format or modify partitions.

On 2/12/07, andrei raevsky <address@hidden> wrote:

on my laptop, I had a swap partition form a previous GNU/Linux distro (Mandrake 7.2) but somehow the gNewSense installer was reading off the CD like crazy which made me think that he could not use it.  I thought the reason was that the swap was not mounted during the install process to allow the installer - probably a GUI front end for fdisk - to access and reformat the drive.  Either way - I tried installing gNewSense three times, but it always ended up freezing and reading like crazy from the CD (with a crrr crrrr crrrrrr sound).  Kanotix installed from the first time.  So I figured that 128RAM was really too little and that the swap partition could not be used during the install.  But your experience indicates otherwise and I wonder what I did wrong...

Did you activate the swap manually (with a 'swapon' command for example) while already in the installer?

On 2/12/07, Jay < address@hidden> wrote:

I am running gNewSense on an old gateway PII with a 500 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM. It works like a charm. The trick is to have a swap partition on the hard drive before you boot the live CD. The live CD will discover this swap partition and activate it, thus allowing the live CD, and subsequently the gNewSense distro, to use it.

On 2/12/07, andrei raevsky < address@hidden> wrote:

This is SUPER useful to me.  I tried installing gNewSense to a laptop with a shitty DVD drive, 128RAM and a 450MHz proc and I simply could not make this work.  I had to install Kanotix 2005-4 on it instead :-(

Do you think that once installed with your hack gNewSense could run on a laptop with that kind of specs? (Ubuntu has 256MB RAM as a minima)

On 2/12/07, Ringo Kamens < address@hidden> wrote:

I know that gnewsense doesn't yet have a "alternate" or minimum
install for computers with low ram/graphics/cpu or that don't have the
right drivers. I had to do the alternate for my computer so here's how
you can do it do.
1. Boot the live cd, hit the red button in the top right, select logout
2. Go to icon in bottom left, select the "Gnome Failsafe Terminal" session
3. Login as username deltad (or root), no password
4. type cd /home/deltad/Desktop in the terminal
5. type cat ubiq* in the terminal
6. You should see a line near the bottom that starts with gksudo
7. Copy that line verbatim and hit enter
8. The install will start.
9. If for some reason it doesn't restart properly, wait 30 seconds
(for hd buffers+cache to clear), and then type halt OR go to the power
button on the top right and hit restart. You can also just pull the
plug (atleast on my HP laptop)

I hope this helps some people because installing was a real bitch for me.
Ringo Kamens


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