[Solved] Fail to get permission to save changes to hda1

[nooby]

I got it all wrong.

Vector really want it to be sda1 as Uelsk8s told me days ago.
I should have trusted you. (edit but the 59SPinitrd.gz seems to need hda1 instead of sda1
but I have to test further. )

I write now from within a frugal install of SOHO following the advice
you gave me in the other thread about menu.lst and frugal install
but there I totally failed to get Std to behave as I had hoped but
SOHO do behave as I hoped.

Well I have not established if it really save things but it works
in all or most other ways as I wanted. And as far as I know now
it is the best distro I have tested. But I am no pro doing tests.

So I will report back here if I also manage to get it to save Swedish
and bookmarks and so on. But now I will take a nap. Have only slept
two hours between 6 AM and 8 AM so eyes are barely staying up here.

I seems to have two ways to deal with problems. To give up instantly
and postpone further attempts for years. That was my reaction to
failing to shut down under Ubuntu and how slow that distro was.

so it took me two years to enter my second way to deal with problems.
To be at it 24/7 and hardly eat or sleep at all until it is solved.

The bad thing with this is that I am so bad at solving that it seldom works.
So no wonder me give up instead cause reality tells me You will fail this time too.

so hope it does succeed this time. I don't like how bloated and resource hungry
Vista is so SOHO Vector Linux looks very attractive.

[caitlyn]

I never said that SOHO was the only real Vector.  Both Standard and Light are perfectly good depending on what your needs are.  I'm running Light right now.  What I did say was that the Live CD is intended as just a Live CD, nothing more.  I personally believe that for real work a full featured OS should be installed properly.  I don't think a frugal install is the way to go nor was Vector installed with that in mind.

The choice between Standard and SOHO depends entirely on which desktop environment you like.  If you like KDE then SOHO is it.  If you prefer the lighterweight Xfce then Standard is the way to go.  Both work equally well.

[nooby]

Yes typical of me to have my own interpretation of intent and meaning.

It all depends on needs and preferences. I guess I really am one of a kind
in that I want frugal as much as possible and that few are as suspiscious
about partitioning as I am.

Re the subject of the thread. I still fail to save changes so obviously I do
something wrong. But it doesn\t scream error. Apart from APM error
but that is not related to saving changes. That is about power control.

Re preferences.

My most preferred feature about SOHO preview is that it mount my hda1
or if it is named sda1 maybe.

Standard doesn't do that and in my world that makes Std a nonthinkable distro.
I have music and pictures and html and text on that harddrive that I spent years
collecting so to no even reach it without having to start up Windows seems a no no.

Could satisfy others but not me.

[Masta]

Well in any event, the SOHO LiveCD Preview, was intended to showcase SOME of the features that the final SOHO Deluxe will have to offer. The livecd DOES have limitations as compared to the Deluxe.
It should still be usable for many "day to day" things, such as the typical web browsing, and those things. However it wasn't meant to save settings and such. Keep in mind that it was meant as the name says ... a Preview of the final product (Deluxe).

It's not like the "typical" livecd as some distros would offer, and it wasn't meant to be. It's just not intended to be a "portable OS" or "Portable Distro". But there are the other VL liveCDs that are , in a manner of speaking, intended to be somewhat , a portable OS (like the VL Light for example), and I think this was what caitlyn was trying to point out earlier (however they don't offer KDE as the desktop Window Manager, as she also pointed out), but I think you might be amazed at the VL Light's desktop , and I would recommend giving that one a try for a frugal situation.

[nooby]

Which shows how naive I am as a person. In my book a preview does save
or else it is not a preview of the real product. I mean it doesn't give a real
"show" of the final product if it doesn't save in frugal install. But that is cause
me had no idea that frugal install was so utterly unuque and alien to most X-ers. .

And it would be more fair to the tester to know that when one did the download?

Are you sure that the "Light" does save in frugal install. Have you tested?
What is the menu.lst cheat code I should use to accomplish both access
to the HDD and to be able to save to the HDD?

I don't mind that a preview is restricted in many ways. But the better way is to show
in a column way that this is what the preview can accomplish and this many features
does the real product have. So one knows this before one download and burn it to test.

Reading this post again I get a hunch where the problem might be.

I am the VL livecd developer.
I have done a "frugal" install of VL and saved changes with the "cheatcode" I gave you previously.
The major difference between what you are trying to do and what I have done is the filesystem. I used ext2 because I knew the kernel has R/W capability for that filesystem. It will require someone installing XP on a ntfs filesystem to try and help you further. I may have time to do this later next week.


HTH,
Uelsk8s

As it is set up now it save to ext2 but it can write to ntfs too but it isn't activated
so most likely one only need to do that in a way that makes it possible. Either in
the cheatcode or through some konsole activating. I just guess. I don't read his answer
as if he has promised me to do it but he doesn't say he is definitively against it either.

And as I wrote to him. I am in no hurry. I can wait cause Vector SOHO is the best of all
distros I have tested so far.

[nooby]

Masta I have to ask you.

Do you refer to this one?
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-5.9/iso-release/VL5.9-Light-FINAL.iso
I've downloaded and burned it and when I boot it then it start to talk about installing
in first F1 help screen. Should I really trust that is a false alarm. Is that one a "Live"
or should I download the live from another link?

[nooby]

Masta I didn't understand your text. vl std has a live version but light is only for install.
that is how I get it and I got it confirmed in another thread. and I burned it too
and it didn't behave like a live cd at all.

The reason me fail to use the vl5.9 std live is that it lacks something me need
which vl 5.9 SOHO has. But just now me have forgotten what it was.

But I tested std rather metickuously kind of.

[nooby]

I used the description how to change /etc/fstab but either me did something wrong
or it didn't work for me. I saved it and did ctrl+alt+back to let it get activated but I still
had no permission to write to the menu.lst file. which is very surprising cause none other
linux has this restriction .what is the purpose of it? one need to change the menu.lst

[toothandnail]

I used the description how to change /etc/fstab but either me did something wrong
or it didn't work for me. I saved it and did ctrl+alt+back to let it get activated but I still
had no permission to write to the menu.lst file. which is very surprising cause none other
linux has this restriction .what is the purpose of it? one need to change the menu.lst

CTRL-ALT-BackSpace will only restart the X server. It will not do anything to change the state of a mounted partition. To do that, you would need to do (as root) 'umount /mnt/<partitionname>' and then remount the partition using (again as root) 'mount /mnt/<partitionname>'

Once that is done, if you have correctly set the partition for read-write access, you should then be able to save changes to your menu.lst file.

paul.

[nooby]

toothandnail, my english is not apt to tell you how much I appreciate that
you take time and help me out.

wow have I to do all that? No wonder I have stayed with windows so long.

But I will do what yo uwrote tomorrow cause I really do want to get it going.

So once again, thanks indeed.

[uelsk8s]

get this file from here: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/59SPinitrd.gz
move it to your c:\boot folder

change your menu.lst to this

Code:

title Vector
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz ramdisk_size=7000 root=/dev/ram0 rw splash=silent vga=791 max_loop=255 init=linuxrc load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 changes=/dev/hda1
        initrd /boot/59SPinitrd.gz

let me know how it goes.

Uelsk8s

[toothandnail]

toothandnail, my english is not apt to tell you how much I appreciate that
you take time and help me out.

No problem. I hope it does help...

wow have I to do all that? No wonder I have stayed with windows so long. [

[/quote]

  I think you've got that wrong. In Windows you would have had to reboot the machine, probably more than once to accomplish the same thing. In Linux you seldom have to reboot to  make the system see changes.

paul.

[wcs]

wow have I to do all that? No wonder I have stayed with windows so long. Smiley

Windows doesn't read or write to ext2 and 3, reiserfs, xfs, and the other formats that Linux can use.
(so far as I knew, although googling now I found some drivers/utilities that seem to do it. I wonder if those can be trusted)

In contrast, Linux can read and write to FAT and NTFS filesystems, even though the former is patented and the latter is secret.

So what you're trying to do is having write-access to a filesystem (NTFS) whose detailed specifications are hidden by Microsoft.

There's an asymmetry here indeed, but it favours Linux.

[nooby]

get this file from here: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/59SPinitrd.gz
move it to your c:\boot folder

change your menu.lst to this

Code:

title Vector
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz ramdisk_size=7000 root=/dev/ram0 rw splash=silent vga=791 max_loop=255 init=linuxrc load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 changes=/dev/hda1
        initrd /boot/59SPinitrd.gz

let me know how it goes.

Uelsk8s

Thanks indeed. I try to do that right away.

Unfortunate I still don't have write permissions so I move it using windows and change menu using windows
and then log in to vector again. I'm in vector now

wcs I agree with you but neither nimblex not zenwalk ask of their noobs to do such elaborate things
as toothandnail described. I am incredibly bad at logic and such but I trust him. One have to do it like
he says but why on vector when zenwalk don\t needs such. I mean what puprose does it have?

I still think Vector is the hitherto best distro me have come upon so it is not that. The learning curve
is just too steep for newbies.

I agree that I am a very non common newbie in that I don't give up and are more confused than all the others.
It is my ADD that makes me fail to keep things in my head more than a few seconds and then they are gone.
Took me years to learn such easy things like setting up an email account in en email client. My bad not yours
and not linux bad but you have to admit that neither nimblex nor zenwalk require one to do such elaborate
things just to get permission to write to menu.lst They could at least warn about it first. and give reason for it too.

[nooby]

Uelsk8s,
Thanks indeed.
wow, just wow, yes that works now I have permission to change menu.lst
What else it gives me I have no idea so no I test the save changes and I
need to learn how to set up swedish keyboard.

Zenwalk allow me to do that from the menu.lst like this keyb=se and it just works.

Does such work in Vector too but maybe look different?