EDIT-UPDATE
After redownloading the iso and creating a new liveusb ,and then tried reinstalling i was successful in installing on the 15GB drive,and the only glitch is that at boot time,the user has to choose the drive to boot from as the bios seem to not want to save my options for some reason..:)But thats fine with me..:):)
I need to thank you all for the valuable help.:)
-------------------------------------------------------------

originl post:

After reading through several other posts i have to say i m not wiser yet//
I want to install antix as the single OS on this old netbook which at present has installed as dual booting windows XP and antix 16.
1..I should ask about the swap option forst,should i use it on SSD hard drives or not,or is it exaggerated the problem i read about elsewhere,with SSD s getting ruined from swapping?
2. Another question i have is about the /home and /root and whether i should try to use the 16gb ssd for /home.I cant understand if it is important to do so or not.Can anyone clear this for me please?Why should i get into the trouble of doing this rather than sticking ith the default?
3. what about formats??? I read
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://yatsite.blogspot.gr/2009/07/install-antix-82-final-on-asus-eee-900.html"
linktext was:"http://yatsite.blogspot.gr/2009/07/inst ... e-900.html"
====================================
that ext2 is better for ssd drives than ext3 (which is what i am using at present with my antix installation )
4.are there any other asus eee specific issues i should be aware of before going ahead with the totl commitment to antix?
So far everything works fine (fom the dual booting and the live antix) and i love it,so ,i cant wait to get rid the windows load and use my small netbook as if it was new..:):)
Best regards to all and thanks in advance for the attention
Gelosoil

GS

I think one of our devs runs antiX on his asus eee netbook.  He might have some tips for you.

As for using ssd for swap, I think it is perfectly fine.  Take a look at
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/03/consumer-ssds-benchmarked-to-death-and-last-far-longer-than-rated/"
linktext was:"Consumer SSDs benchmarked to death—and last far longer than rated"
====================================
.   Most of them survived writing 1 million gigabytes of data.   The test took over a year to complete, continuously writing to the ssds.   If you are in a situation where the machine is on for weeks or months at time and is constantly swapping most of that time then wear will be an issue but this is not close to normal usage.   Older and small ssds probably have reduced longevity compared to the models that were tested but I doubt you will have the netbook on long enough for wear to be an issue.

I'm not sure I fully understand your question about using a 16G ssd for /home.   Are there two drives in the machine?   Anyway, you will see almost no improved performance by moving /home from hd to ssd.   You will see a difference if you move / from hd to ssd.   Some people like to have /home on a separate partition to help migrate data from one install to another.   But I think this is very out-moded.  I keep my data on a separate partition I mount at /data (dating back to the 1990s on Solaris).    Your home directory is full of configuration files and trying to share these between distros or installs can cause problems.  On an netbook, I don't know if any of this matters.   If you only have 16G then I would use it all for / and then you are free to choose to use the space for data or for more programs as needs arise.

It usually helps to post the output of the command"inxi -F" in between [ code ] ... [ /code ] tags (no spaces).  This gives us more information about your machine.  For example, the importance of swap depends on how much RAM you have.   I suggest you keep an eye on how much swap is used.  The conky system monitor that is already installed can help you with this.

Are there two drives in the machine?

Yep. On some models. Mine when I wrote those how to's had  2.  A 4 gig and a 16 gig SSD. Some other 900's had 4/8 or 16  gig single ssd drives I think.
But already mentioned by Gelosoil

i should try to use the 16gb ssd for /home

Which leads me to believe he has the 800 MHZ Celeron dual 4/16 Phison SSD model of eeepc 900 like I had.
You can install just to the 16 gig drive and leave the 4 gig for storage.
As far as wear and tear on Phison SSD tech. Early cheapo SSD drives that are weak and not as sturdy as newer ssd tech.

Up to you I guess if you wanna a journaling file system that writes constantly on them.

Edit: Wondering if a swap file. VS a swap partition. Would be lighter on the beating on the drive? Not sure about zram either without a inxi -F report in this thread . Which would probably help out in answering questions

I never needed swap on mine because I bumped the ram the 2 gig. The max those 32 bit net books take.

After I sold mine. I bought 2 M&A Companion Touchscreen Netbooks with Intel Atom N270 and ide interface ide 30 gig platter hard drives which handle multiple writes a bit better.

Just a friendly Hint after you install. Run a lighter browser than Forefox/Iceweasel. Leave it installed because it will run. You got a steep learning curve and hoops to jump through because of certain limitations on these older netbooks. Heck. Even my atom netbooks require me to think outside of the box when it comes to using them as a everyday appliance.

Good to see you did your homework before you started this thread. Howdy and Welcome from the dude from YATS. I abandoned that google site after it took too much work to clean up spam every day there and the other dude I was gone for what ever reason and left me holding the bag.

 

  

use my small netbook as if it was new..:):)

Well. Back when I was a mod at eeepc forums before the site went bust. We would make recommendations like these. The access door on the back allows these easy peasy upgrades.


^---- embedded YouTube-hosted video: https://www.youtube.com/2dP6qqtD57Q



My video above is for a 900A single drive model. But the video is just to give a general idea of what I just posted. The access door on the dual drive models are actually larger and give more space to work on them.

Sorry I'm a little late on this, I was camping and didn't have my password to the forum on my phone since the tapatalk change :)     I use antiX on an eee pc, and on other machines with small SSDs.  I stick with all the defaults.  ext4 partitions, and swap on the device.   The swap is rarely accessed, even on the 1gb system.  The journaling on the ext4 system has saved my bacon a couple of times, and I don't want to go without the journaling to spare some write cycles on the SSD.

Hello all and thanks for the plentiful info:)
I m trying as we speak to install on sbd and at the final stage of the installer (after asking for installing grub to mrb i choose sdb and it just quits,closes the installer and nothing further.
I shut down and reboot without the liveusb,and what i get is a grub command line ...\
And this is where my knowledge stops ,how  do i proceed??with the liveusb i just had to type in the command live (I discovered it by chance) to boot from it,but now the installed antix seems to need something else..|
Please help !

(i tried both drives ,4 and 16 gb internal ssd and i get exactly the same.
I M NOT SURE IF THIS IS IMPORTANT but i have formatted both disks with gparted and deleted ALL pertitions...(which might prove to be a stupid move).
So do i have to start looking for the disks that came with the netbook or are there ways to make this run??
-As you all guessed by now i m not that knowledgable on linux,so i hope i m not testing anyone's patience..:):)
regards from rainy greece

While waiting for a response I read the grub manual but didnt get wiser yet..:):)
Seems i did something really wrong during partitioning these SSD drives ....:)

I m stuck with grub command line..
What is the file name of the kernel it asks me for??(before boot )
I tried the load_env but i dont know which file it needs

On the grub command line:

>boot
error: you need to load kernel first  (so i take it i need a kernel filename)

>load_env / (Tab to see the possible files )
Possible files are : lost&found/ home/ opt/ dev/ proc/ sys/ run/ tmp/ etc/ boot/

So this is how far i got ,after installing on both sda and sdb (separeate attempts of course:)
Again ,i can boot from usb ,(pressing escape while booting brings up t meny with the devices,the 2 sdd and the usb.
So i d expect that as it boots from the external usb it should do with the ssd,no??Maybe i should repartition the internal drives as ntfs first,then run uunetbootin to"create live usb" on the internal drives...Is this stupid?

itching fingers and no eeepc to scratch them on...Help!:):)

PS

You should have chosen"MBR" if you wanted to use our bootloader.  There can be only one MBR bootloader per disk so distros have to share.  We offer the choice of grabbing the MBR bootloader or installing to the root partition so an already installed (Linux) bootloader can chainload to our system.  Which partition did you install to? "sdb" is an entire disk, not a partition.  If we know the partition then  you can use syslinux on the live-usb to point the MBR to boot from the partition you installed our bootloader on.

It might be simpler (but more time consuming) to install again and choose"MBR".    The instruction for using syslinux to have the MBR point to our root partition are here:
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Mbr"
linktext was:"Syslinux MBR (master boot record)"
====================================
.  You would use the altmbr.bin method.  If you installed antiX on the first partition of the sda drive then you would run this command to fix the MBR: That's it.  Reboot and you may need to press the <Esc> key during the power-on-self-test to get to a menu that will allow you to select what disk to boot from.   If it doesn't select the correct drive automatically then press the <F2> key during power-on-self-test to change the boot order in BIOS.  But it may all just work after you run the command above from the live-usb.   I suggest you try this first since it is fast and relatively easy.  You can also re-do the install if the fast elegant way doesn't work.

There are probably other"standard" ways to fix it using the grub repair tools.

I put the command above into a tiny little script.  Download the attachment, unpack it with: and then run the script like this: If you didn't install to the first partition on the sda drive then you will have to make trivial changes to the script.

BitJam wrote:

.  

It might be simpler (but more time consuming) to install again and choose"MBR".    The instruction for using syslinux to have the MBR point to our root partition are here:
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Mbr"
linktext was:"Syslinux MBR (master boot record)"
====================================
.  You would use the altmbr.bin method.  If you installed antiX on the first partition of the sda drive then you would run this command to fix the MBR:

Code: Select all

printf '\1' | cat /usr/lib/SYSLINUX/altmbr.bin - | sudo dd bs=440 count=1 conv=notrunc iflag=fullblock of=/dev/sda

Thanks a lot but i am sorry to announce this is not what my problem is,i run it anyway 
and ,I still get to the grub command line (which is i believe indication that grub is fine)and no further

"You should have chosen"MBR""

...
check! (thats what i did in all attempts anyway)

"Which partition did you install to?"sdb" is an entire disk, not a partition.".

.I used the option entire drive in the antix installer , if i try to choose partitions the"root" box of the installer comes up empty instead of sda1 or  whatever.
I thought this shows a potential problem 

 If we know the partition then  you can use syslinux on the live-usb to point the MBR to boot from the partition you installed our bootloader on.

this is my problem,i dont know the file names /commands  that need to be used./or even which ones i should be looking for...
i get the grub command line,what i dont know is how to proceed from there..
I mean the commands and the file name i need to use,they should be standard as i am using the defaults for everything..:)no?

Anyways i ll keep trying ,but no,this was not the problem,i have grub on sda,sdb,sdc(usb stick),almost everywhere..:):)And it works fine,if booting from usb.
The problems start with the SSD drives.
I ve tried reinstalling several times on sda and sdb,both give the same behaviour of quitting the antix installer before it completes ..(during the grub installation-final stages)
then on reboot i choose sda or sdb and both get me to grub command line...only usb boots..
regards 
GS

Install to the first HDD, /dev/sda, choose the drive as the target to install to, make sure that you have 4gb or more for the installation, go with the defaults, install grub to the mbr. Then you should be able to reboot into your new system.

Edit: If you do have 2 disks, we can tell you how to add it, once you have a running system installed.

rokytnji wrote:

Are there two drives in the machine?

Yep. On some models. Mine when I wrote those how to's had  2.  A 4 gig and a 16 gig SSD. Some other 900's had 4/8 or 16  gig single ssd drives I think.
But already mentioned by Gelosoil

i should try to use the 16gb ssd for /home

Which leads me to believe he has the 800 MHZ Celeron dual 4/16 Phison SSD model of eeepc 900 like I had.
You can install just to the 16 gig drive and leave the 4 gig for storage.
As far as wear and tear on Phison SSD tech. Early cheapo SSD drives that are weak and not as sturdy as newer ssd tech.

Up to you I guess if you wanna a journaling file system that writes constantly on them.

Edit: Wondering if a swap file. VS a swap partition. Would be lighter on the beating on the drive? Not sure about zram either without a inxi -F report in this thread . Which would probably help out in answering questions

I never needed swap on mine because I bumped the ram the 2 gig. The max those 32 bit net books take.

After I sold mine. I bought 2 M&A Companion Touchscreen Netbooks with Intel Atom N270 and ide interface ide 30 gig platter hard drives which handle multiple writes a bit better.

Just a friendly Hint after you install. Run a lighter browser than Forefox/Iceweasel. Leave it installed because it will run. You got a steep learning curve and hoops to jump through because of certain limitations on these older netbooks. Heck. Even my atom netbooks require me to think outside of the box when it comes to using them as a everyday appliance.

Good to see you did your homework before you started this thread. Howdy and Welcome from the dude from YATS. I abandoned that google site after it took too much work to clean up spam every day there and the other dude I was gone for what ever reason and left me holding the bag.

Thanks for the kind words and the info.
Indeed i have the atom 1.2 cpu in this (eeepc-901 is the model) wt 4 and 16 gb drives .-bought it in spain 10 years ago,with linux only,but never used it,at the time i used windows xp,then 2016 i discovered antix!!!:):)
So i was dual booting for a while and then decided to get rid of windows xp and install clean antix only.....
and this is where the problems started.:)
I am thinking maybe to use uunetbootin to create a live installation but on the ssd,is this going to work ??
(I ll try it anyways but maybe you know something more abt this i should take into account??

To be honest i am surprised it went so wrong,so far antix was offering me a smooth experience.
But maybe is just a matter of my ignorance and the solution is some grub command (which i couldnt find out so far,the grub manual is not for the fainthearted...or those with limited knowledge like me..:)
About browsers ,I am already using slimjet  on all my computers,i am really happy with it,firefox i never liked anyway.
I hope this makes sense ,i m not a total newbie but i am not a proficient linux user either.
So grub is really testing for me..:):)--simplicity can be complicated):):)
Thanks again ,keep the help coming...:)

Try Rufus instead of Unetbootin.

From the above, I see you have a 4gb & 16gb drive; you will need to install to the 16gb drive if using the graphical installer, as the 4gb drive is too small for it.

It is an unfortunate quirk of the graphical installer; there is a commandline installer that works for smaller drives, but takes a bit more Linux knowledge to use.

Edit: On that machine, it may well work as a frugal install, but that is much more difficult for a newbie to set up. ;)

fatmac wrote: Edit: On that machine, it may well work as a frugal install, but that is much more difficult for a newbie to set up. ;)

Have you tried"F5 Persist" -->"frugal" in the bootloader?  IMO this is *far* easier to set up than a normal install.  If installing to an ssd I suggest going with the frugal_static option.

My bad, (as you say) - last time I tried, some time go, I did it by hand - good to see it being an option now. :)

I would therefore suggest giving it a go, as it will make the most of your available disk space, & should easily install to the 4gb drive.