Core on a Pentium MMX Toshiba laptop: no partitions!

[theYinYeti]

Hi,

I have a Toshiba 300CDS, that I use as a X thin client, and rarely “as itself”. It has 48MB RAM, a Pentium 166 MMX CPU, and 2.5GB HD.

It currently runs DSL, but this seems to be a dead distribution (latest version in 2008).
So I thought about changing to Tiny Core. I copied Core 4.2’s vmlinuz and core.gz, as well a an existing tce directory to the existing hda2 ext2 partition (hda1 is swap), and appended an adequate entry to the existing Grub 0.97 menu.

Boot goes fine, but I have a problem: no partitions are seen! /proc/partitions is empty save the line with zram0. So of course mount fails to see /dev/hda2 (sda2 gives the same result of course).
I tried plugging an USB flash drive (usable with DSL), and running the /usr/bin/mountables.sh script, to no avail. /proc/partitions remains (almost) empty, and /etc/fstab shows no USB or IDE partition.

Whatever /dev/xxx I give, mount gives the same output:

Code: [Select]

mount: mounting /dev/xxx on /path failed: No such device or address
What should I do?

[curaga]

Please post your dmesg (after plugging something usb in).

For your ide issue, 4.4 may help.

[theYinYeti]

That was not easy No network client of any kind, no usb, no disk… But I managed to find one usable floppy! Here is dmesg:
http://pastebin.com/vwAqxz9j

This is before or after I plugged the usb flash drive, as you like: after I plugged the usb flash drive, nothing changed at all in the output of dmesg…
Thank you for your help.

Yves.

[curaga]

- your usb was detected, but disabled because of an IRQ issue. Perhaps something you can fix in the bios?
- your pcmcia ethernet card was detected ok
- only 32mb ram detected? That's going to be a bit tight...

No mention of the ide indeed, so please try 4.4. Support for ISA ide controllers was added in that version.

[theYinYeti]

Thank you curaga! Indeed 4.4(rc2) did the trick :-) Now hda2 is seen and mounted.

Now as you feared, I lack memory :-( I’ll review the different installation methods and see if I can do with the memory I have.
Topic solved.

Yves

[Rich]

Hi theYinYeti
If you have not already done so, here are a few things you can try to free up some RAM:
1. Use a persistent  /home
2. Use a persistent  /opt
3. Add a swap file
4. Use the  nozswap  boot code

[theYinYeti]

Thank you Rich for your suggestions
As it happens, I’ve just created a new topic to this end: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,12723.0.html

I’ll try what you say.

[curaga]

4. Use the  nozswap  boot code

This may be counterproductive, especially on a low-ram system as this.