maincomp

I'm new to Linux, barely able to poke around a little with basic commands, so please, be gentle. I am a proficient Windows admin, so I understand most of the concepts.

Ultimately, my goal is to setup virtualbox on DSL (damnsmalllinux) to host other virtuals with various OS, but I'm having much more basic issues.

I have a Fujitsu T4020 tablet (serial SATA) and can't get the install of DSL (booting from CD) to see my harddrive.

when I cfdisk, I get "FATAL ERROR: Cannot read disk drive"
fdisk -l pulls up nothing.
cat /procs/partitions displays "major minor #blocks name" with no other information.

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.

wmorri

Hi,

I would start with the basics that you need to make sure that your computer is seeing your hdd. I would make sure that they bios is seeing it.

Cheers!

maincomp

Good call, thanks for the suggestion. let me clarify that. It was a windows xp machine seconds before I tried to reload with DSL. BIOS sees the harddrive. Windows sees the harddrive. I have since installed Kubuntu on it, and it sees the harddrive just fine. That will work for the moment, but would still like to try the DSL solution just because of the size difference.

wmorri

You said that you wanted to run virtualization on DSL. You do understand that virtualization can tax the system harder then just running a program on the host OS. I am curious what the specs are on your tablet, and what you are wanting to run in virtualization.

Cheers!

maincomp

I'd like to run a Linux box and a WinXP box as virtuals for learning purposes. Pretty familiar with XP, very new with Linux of any flavor. I'm mainly looking for a dual boot type scenario that I don't have to boot to switch back and forth. I use virtuals at work, but all on a WinXP or Server/VMWare platform. Been using both Virtual PC and VMWare. I like to use snapshots, and the ability to not save changes after screwing something up. Yes, I do understand the running a virtual is intensive and would like as little overhead for the host OS as possible. Maybe that's where I'm missing something.

Eventually like to get a little more familiar with things like Snort, Nessus, DD, wireshark, but since I come from a Windows background I need to build up some Linux background first.

Relevant specs for this box:
Intel Pentium M740 1.73gHz
2GB RAM
60GB Harddrive

Does that give you the background you need? If you have suggestions on a better way, please toss them out. Since I'm pretty noob, I'm probably missing something relevant.

Done_Fishin

I prefer the idea of booting from a USB flash drive or Hard drive for linux distro's

Booting from USB is quite helpful because it's not intrusive on your main system although it can be painfully slow when booting.

CD2USB is a good way to go with Ubuntu giving the ability to save any changes.

I don't really see the purpose (apart from the fact that you can say I did it!!) of overloading ones 'puter with vmware .. unless you want to switch between OS's whilst working. I assume that it will slow things right down unless you are only doing "text input", but then as yet I haven't gone down that root to be able to judge .

take a look at http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ for usb boot and http://hacktolive.org/wiki/Cd2usb for making a Ubuntu or super ubuntu install to an HDD on usb adapter

For DSl through the pendrive link

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/all-in-one-usb-dsl/