vector linux light installs on cf-27 but hangs at boot going to multi user GUI

[captina_sensible]

hello

have been playing around with different distros for my panasonic toughbook's cf-27 .( I have 5 )
spec :
pentium II
300mhz
128 ram
6.4gb hdd

Vector Linux light , best so far , managed to go through install using .iso burned onto cd.
 Got a list to choose keyboard and coudn't see mine so picked generic. Anyway got to end
and got installation completed. booted up and choose linux from option of two on boot menu.

booted up well and quickly, but then hung at : rc.x==> going to multiuser GUI

any ideas to fix?

Also:

Tried  puppy and got  it installed but didn't like having to choose at each boot up the  time zone etc, at least thats what happened with mine, is that normal .can options be saved so it boots straight to screen gui? i wouldn't mind myself but they are for other people.
I have 5 of  cf-27, they are going to Ghana  the first one to a school so I need something that when set up boots straight to a Gui desktop.

I am generally a green horn , only able to do simple terminal commands such as apt-get autoclean from terminal so can not handle any heavy terminal based installs .   

cheers

[M0E-lnx]

Try booting into command line mode by picking the vector-cli or Vectorlinux-cli option from the boot prompt or by selecting the regular default entry, hit the tab key, and then type a "2" (no quotes" at the end of the line.

If you can't do that, boot it normally, then when it gets stuck, press ctrl+alt+F2 simultaneously. That would give you a text login prompt. Log in as user root and enter the root password, then execute this command

Code:

init 2

that will kill any attempts to start X and give you a plain text system.
Once you're there, execute

Code:

startx

It might hang on you... that's ok.. just press CTRL+ALT+backspace

Post any errors you see on the screen after that here.

[captina_sensible]

hi M0E-lnx

thanks for your reply -well to cut a long  story short re-installed from Cd  because playing with puppy seemed to had affected hard drive; this time took  more care on partitions for swap, and home it went all the way through this time to login, and got lake and mountain in background desktop view  after log in!

had a quick play around with "pathetic writer" -  "elegant editor" would have been my choice in name ! anyway response quick considering 300mhz on cf-27. System seems fine to me the only thing i would need is to get it to connect to internet. In Ghana
I found The Zain  modem dongle (usb port) worked a treat with ubuntu 9.04  jaunty jackel on my elonex webbook.

I have found that on another cf-27 using Xp it recognised the Huawei 3 USB modem(one usb port at back of cf-27) in the UK  .
 So if i can get Vector light to work with 3 mobile dongle in th uk it will definitely work with the Zain  dongle in ghana.

will play around and check out forums.

cheers

[M0E-lnx]

So I'm assuming you got your graphics problem figured out then.?

[captina_sensible]

yes thanks the re-install ironed out previous problem.

I guess i didn't do the set up right in the first place

the only thing i need to figure out is how to connect to the internet using a usb dongle modem in easy stages.

With ubuntu you just put in the  modem at the usb port and a help window comes up, looks like its going to be a learning curve with toughbook
and vl6.

enterd  lspci on xterm after logging in su -l ,  lsusb and dmesg

got :
GSM modem now attached to ttyUSB0
then HUAWEI MMC storage 

and device 007 id 12d1:1003 Huawei E220 HSDPA Modem

any idea of the simplest way of getting a usb dongle modem to work ?

[M0E-lnx]

I think your solution is going to be wvdial + something like chestnut dialer or gnome-ppp or maybe kppp.