Arch Linux

PaulBx1

Member

Registered: 2008-10-18

Posts: 142

Best way to install on a Dell Mini 9?

Hello, I'm giving arch a try again, this time on a Dell Mini 9. This machine has an 8GB SSD of which about 5GB is filled with Windows XP. I also have a 16GB sdhc card in the machine, not currently dedicated. There are two possible ways to boot: from the SSD or from a USB flash drive. The problem is that I don't want to boot with USB because I don't want a flash drive hanging off the side all the time. Unfortunately I cannot boot from the SDHC card.

Ideally I'd like to put most of arch on the sdhc but rig some other way to get through the boot process. One idea that occurs to me is to shrink the ntfs partition a bit and put an arch /boot partition on the SSD. I already have the grub loader set up to boot puppy linux (which resides in a directory on the C: drive) so it would just be another entry in the menu.lst. So, if I do that, do I just copy the stuff in the /boot directory from the arch USB flash install, down to that partition? Will that do it for me? Then everything else from arch runs off the sdhc card?

Only problem I see is the low performance of this card, even though I bought the fastest one I could find. Maybe I should just spring for a new, larger SSD and put arch in another partition in it.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Last edited by PaulBx1 (2011-09-27 15:44:58)

PSW

Member

From: Brighton

Registered: 2011-06-15

Posts: 32

Re: Best way to install on a Dell Mini 9?

If you already have GRUB on the SSD then you should be able to just stick your Arch kernel on the drive next to Puppy Linux's Kernel, and then tell GRUB to use the SDHC as root. You could save some space by using the same Kernel for Arch and Puppy if you feel comfortable with Kernel Configuration.

PaulBx1

Member

Registered: 2008-10-18

Posts: 142

Re: Best way to install on a Dell Mini 9?

Thanks for the tip.

I decided to get rid of the Dell Utility partition on the SSD (about 55MB) and use that space for /boot. I also figured out my difficulty about using the flash drive for holding the iso, a little different than in Puppy land so I was temporarily confused about it. Anyway I tried the install and got errors with grub install, something to do with /boot/grub/menu.lst (also a "vercmp" command used in a few packages, but that was not the killer).

Unfortunately I did not have access to any alternative consoles as the Dell Mini 9 does not have any dedicated Fn keys (they are in the asdf... row). If I press Alt-Fn-s for example, to get another console, the screen just goes black and I cannot get back to where I was. So anyway I just stopped the install with the power button. This apparently killed the partition on the sd card I was installing to, and I can't fsck it back to life. So I can't access the install log any more either (I'm assuming it is in /var/log somewhere).

I did look at /boot/grub and there is an empty menu.lst file there; can't guess what the problem was with it. And e2fsck cleaned /boot up OK.

Well, I have other work to do for a while so I will come back to this in a few days.

Last edited by PaulBx1 (2011-09-27 15:42:17)

machinecrusade

Member

From: Victoria, Canada

Registered: 2010-09-12

Posts: 11

Re: Best way to install on a Dell Mini 9?

i would do the same thing,  dd to flashdrive, make your /boot on your 55meg partition, and everything else on your 16 gig drive.  then edit menu.lst to boot your old xp and puppy on c:/.     start again and fix all your partitions,  it will work.