Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

greenjeans · 2024-12-17 16:08:17

Is there a technical/speed advantage or disadvantage to having SWAP at the end of the drive?
Does having SWAP at the end make it easier to reconfigure the other partitions when necessary?

1. No speed advantage that i'm aware of, I don't even know how you'd measure that.
2. Depends on what you mean by "reconfigure" I guess. As long as i've been with linux that's just always the way it's been done, i've always assumed there were good reasons for that, perhaps somebody more knowledgeable can say why.

I agree every firmly with Kapqa's post (#50), on older machines burning to a CD or DVD is pretty much bullet-proof and works for me every time, plus after burning I now have a hard copy of the .iso that will last forever unless it gets scratched up too bad or set on fire.

I have old distros and projects of mine on CD going back to 2009, every now and then I boot one up just for fun and look at what I did back then.

All that being said, running a distro off a stick is fun, and frequently in my experience runs faster usually than really old hard drives, I have run old machines for months on either a stick or a CD (Puppy Linux back when it was actually small).

Mintstick works really well if you just want a pure liveUSB and nothing else, it's in the repo. For all other chores i'm sticking with Refracta2usb, it seem complex at first, but after you've used it a few times you really begin to appreciate it's versatility.

chris2be8 · 2024-12-17 17:20:48

Swap placement will have no effect on performance on a SSD.

On spinning rust it will only have any effect if you are actually using swap space. Seeking from 1 cylinder to another takes longer if they are further apart, so having swap space near to the data files you are accessing at the same time will be slightly faster. But if you are using swap space that often your performance will feel very slow.

I learnt a lot about tuning disks and swap space when I was a MVS systems programmer (back then 64Mb was a big system). Nowadays I'd prefer to just buy more RAM (after checking for software with a memory leak).

greenjeans · 2024-12-17 17:32:51

^^ Yep.

In practice the only few times swap has ever been used on my machines, was because something went very wrong with some particular program and it went wild chewing up all the ram. Usually this was my fault, messing about trying experimental stuff and not having a plethora of ram to start with.

mtbvfr · Today 02:19:25

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn wrote:

the BT on the description/title may denote this company

I think you are right about the BT based on the feedback I got a couple of days later from the seller whose English is not too bad and friendly in nature.

According to the Tracking the RAM cleared the local crooks clearance yesterday and Ozzie Post received it this morning. May get it by the end of the week, touch wood.

Never heard back from the USA sources.

Last edited by mtbvfr (Today 02:20:59)

mtbvfr · Today 02:44:21

steve_v wrote:

There's usually no need to go after "branded" modules or those specifically mentioned in the manual, you just need supported technology

I got 2 x 2GB DDR2 667MHz KVR667D2S5/2G Laptop Memory SDRAM Kingston for $AUD12.59 for the Toshiba and 2 x 8GB DDR3L 1600MHz PC3L-12800S Laptop RAM Kingston HyperX Impact for $AUD29.99 for the Lenovo which I will test in the Dell also.

mtbvfr · Today 02:59:40

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn wrote:

your description of boot messages beginning with "PXE"

Had another look in the BIOS just to reconfirm that the date and time is still current.

There's no setting for turning off PXE booting and the LAN option can't be removed from the list of Boot Device options given. Putting it last hasn't made any difference neither.

I'm curious as to whether the BIOS and Win XP OS could have been "hardwired" in the era that this Laptop was introduced like UEFI can.

If so, could the installation of the other Hard Drive have upset the apple cart?

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · Today 09:33:09

went back and reread the entire thread. have an additional question for clarification. in reply number thirty-eight(38) you relate:

Yesterday morning, for the second time, I removed the original Hard Drive (with Windows XP on it) to check that a more modern and higher capacity Hard Drive (WD 500GB Blue, 5400 RPM) was detected by the BIOS and could be recognised and accessed with Thunar using the Devuan 5 Live DVD. That was successful.

so that quote seems to imply that your original thread topic "Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo" is no longer accurate? what got me thinking and then rereading was wondering exactly what your optical drive could and/or couldn't do/read/write and i recalled your mention of a blank dvd and wondered if the optical drive could even do dvd media.

so...again, i rereference the same quote where you describe

was detected by the BIOS and could be recognised and accessed with Thunar using the Devuan 5 Live DVD. That was successful.

and so you are using Thunar via the Devuan 5 Live DVD on the 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo?

humbly request clarification please. thanks.

ps/fyi: am also dealing with inconsistent and problematic bios and am leaning towards firmware level corruption in this particular case since there was quite a bit of unofficial bios firmware "modding" within the gaming community surrounding this particular device(back when the unit was new, but not anymore). definitely frustrating and in some cases unfixable(at least without a known-good-firmware written directly to the chip which normally requires extensive disassembly)

nevertheless, when it stops being fun...stop. imho. ymmv.

mtbvfr · Today 10:35:35

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn wrote:

went back and reread the entire thread

When I was first attempting to boot the Tecra A7 with Devuan 5, I was using a USB Flash Drive.

I didn't realise at the time that there was a Blank DVD in the Optical Drive Bay. I was going to buy a blank DVD but I can't remember now what prompted me to open the Drive Bay.

I have Devuan 5 installed on the Dell and used Xfburn to create a Live DVD of Devuan 5 and with that I was able to boot the Tecra A7.

So yes, I was using Thunar from the Live DVD on the Tecra A7.

Hope that helps.

Looks like the RAM could show up on Tuesday.

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · Today 12:46:53

huge thanks for the clarification and update!

good luck with the ram and happy holidays whatever/whichever is your pleasure.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#51 2024-12-17 16:08:17

Re: Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

#52 2024-12-17 17:20:48

Re: Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

#53 2024-12-17 17:32:51

Re: Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

#54 Today 02:19:25

Re: Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

#55 Today 02:44:21

Re: Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

#56 Today 02:59:40

Re: Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

#57 Today 09:33:09

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#58 Today 10:35:35

Re: Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

#59 Today 12:46:53

Re: Devuan 5 not Booting on 2005 Toshiba Tecra A7 Intel Centrino Duo

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