Hi all,

Let me first congratulate the devs of Antix : This Toshiba has a 233Mhz Pentium MMX, 160MB ram, and the AntiX-16 CD does boot, does bring up the PCMCIA Ethernet card, and I can then proceed to install on the 60GB hard disk, with Grub on MBR, no errors.
No small feat!

But... I have tried just about everything, but at boot I always get the <grub rescue> prompt.
I can then list the contents of /home, but any other list attempt (/boot, etc) will bring up a"error attempt to read or write outside of disk hd0" message.
We are asked during the install process if there is a previous /home partition. I just wonder if the source of the problem might be there. I tried at various times to create a /boot or a /home partition.

I went through the chroot and grub-install routine, and through the"apt-get purge" and"apt-get install grub-pc" routine : both times, same <grub rescue> prompt.

Most rescue or super-grub CDs will just not boot.
AntiX is just about the only distro which accepts to install on this no-pae and no-cmov processor.
I can list the hard disk contents fine from the AntiX CD, I list the /home and /boot directories, no problem. Windows 2000 runs fine.
The project was to transform this older but very reliable hardware into a LAMP server, no desktop, no X.

Any idea where I should look ?

Before installing, run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade since IIRC you need a newer cli-installer (I'm assuming you are installing core version)

Thanks for the answer. Yes, I install the core version.

The problem is I run from a CD, not a writable media (boot from USB is not available in Bios), so I get write errors.

Maybe I could use the internal hard disk or a USB stick as a writable medium for the update, but that's beyond my knowledge zone...

You can install running live even on a cd, of course it is not saved on reboot.

Try apt-get update && apt-get install cli-installer-antix

If you want to try a USB boot, have a look here:


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Chris

@anticapitalista: I do get farther that way.
But there is the GPG error at antix.daveserver.info jessie InRelease, with various KEYEXPIRED.
Then it tells me"unable to locate package cli-installer","unable to locate package antix".

So I tried :
apt-get update
apt-get install --only-upgrade cli-installer-antix
then it wants to upgrade cli-installer-antix, but it fails with :
FATAL -> Failed to fork.
which is I believe an out of memory error.

So, I'm kind of stuck, until there is an updated iso ?

@chrispop99: thanks for the tip !
Will definitely try that one.

There is an updated iso. 16.1


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That's 16.1 I was trying.
I have now tried 16.2 with the same result, i.e. the"grub rescue" prompt after install.
I tried 17.a2, still from a CD :
it boots, etc, then tells me something like"boot device mounted at /live/boot-dev" which is Ok.
but the next line is"cp: can't stat /live/linux/etc/localtime: no such file or directory".
then various"illegal instruction" lines.

Now this is being a CD/RW, though verified at brurning on another PC, who knows if it's read really Ok.

Currently trying chrispop99's suggestion.

just in case, do NOT burn the cd/dvd at max speed.

cds 32-40X is good.
DVDs 8x is good.

Got to give the burn time to get everything on the disk, but to slow will blow out also. Learned the hard way.

Shay wrote:just in case, do NOT burn the cd/dvd at max speed.

cds 32-40X is good.
DVDs 8x is good.

Got to give the burn time to get everything on the disk, but to slow will blow out also. Learned the hard way.

I've also learned through bitter experience that the CD drives on old laptops can be unreliable at reading data. Not a problem for playing some tunes, but fatal for an install.

I keep a modern USB external optical drive for that very reason.

Chris

Following your wise suggestions, I slowed the CD burning, and now I can boot Antix-17.a2 net version, no errors.

But, to my great disappointment, this version does not see my PCMCIA 3Com Ethernet card :"lspcmcia" returns nothing.
I still did an install, and got the same"grub rescue" prompt, from which I can list the contents of (hd0,msdos1)/home but not those of (hd0,msdos1)/boot.

Earlier I had tried the plop boot manager : it does start, sees the USB stick if the Bios setting is at"no legacy emulation", but just gets stuck when I ask to boot it.

I'm afraid I'm out of solutions...

Do you give it a swap partition.
Are you installing into a 4GB or larger partition.
Try installing an older version first, 13.2 was a good version.
Can you try installing by putting your disk on another machine or adapter.

Edit: You might try using extlinux, (part of the syslinux package), to boot the machine. (There is also lilo, but that can be a pain.) __{{emoticon}}__

Have you checked the hdd in gparted while booted to the cd?

I hqave had to remove some crazy weird stuff when I run into you situation and set the hdd as the Boot drive in gparted.


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> Do you give it a swap partition.
I tried with and without. It seems that when there is one the live CD mounts it and uses it.

> Are you installing into a 4GB or larger partition.
I have tried a separate 2GB /boot partition, /home /boot and /, and / only which is 60gb.

> Try installing an older version first, 13.2 was a good version.
Why not, I'll give it a go.

> Can you try installing by putting your disk on another machine or adapter.
No, I don't have that...

> You might try using extlinux, (part of the syslinux package), to boot the machine.
I'll read about that one.

> Have you checked the hdd in gparted while booted to the cd?
gparted I can't remember but it did check with fdisk, the right partition had the boot flag, the disk could be read, etc.