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 · 2024-12-22 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 (2024-12-22 02:20:59)

mtbvfr · 2024-12-22 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 · 2024-12-22 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 · 2024-12-22 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 · 2024-12-22 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 · 2024-12-22 12:46:53

huge thanks for the clarification and update!

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

mtbvfr · 2024-12-27 04:42:49

Hi Folks,

Have the system rocking after having to manually set SWAP in fstab because I forgot to check the associated Checkbox during install to use the Swap partition I created.

There's only 3GB RAM available, as per the following page, but that's 6x better than 512MB.

https://support.dynabook.com/support/vi … Id=1816242

Having trouble with the System Clock and can't find accurate documentation on how to fix it.

The clock in BIOS is correctly set to my local time.

I used dpkg-reconfigure tzdata to set the Region and Location but the time in the clock in the Task Bar is not correct.

As per some searching on the Devuan Forum, ntp is already installed.

The displayed time is 10 hours ahead of local time.

What is the correct way to fix this?

Thanks!!

RedGreen925 · 2024-12-27 04:58:44

What is the correct way to fix this?

Set the BIOS time to UTC or change the /etc/adjtime to say LOCAL instead of the UTC time it is now set too.

zeus@9600k:~$ cat  /etc/adjtime
0.000000 1735138312 0.000000
1735138312
UTC

https://wiki.debian.org/DateTime

mtbvfr · 2024-12-27 05:19:01

When I reload Synaptic, I get the following message at the end:

Could not download all repository indexes
The repository may no longer be available or could not be contacted because of network problems. If available an older version of the failed index will be used. Otherwise the repository will be ignored. Check your network connection and ensure the repository address in the preferences is correct.
Repository 'http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'testing' to 'stable'
Repository 'http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-updates InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'testing-updates' to 'stable-updates'
Repository 'http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-security InRelease' changed its 'Label' value from 'Devuan Security' to 'Devuan-Security'

RedGreen925 · 2024-12-27 05:30:05

When I reload Synaptic, I get the following message at the end:

That is not what is needed, we need to see the contents of the /etc/apt/sources.list file to confirm the correct lines in there.

# normal devuan sources
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

You should see a line similar to what I have above listed for the main updates, then the daedalus-updates & daedalus-security on their own lines in the file too.

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · 2024-12-27 07:28:50

searched the forum for "changed its 'Suite' value from 'testing' to 'stable'"(quotation marks added to this post for clarity but not used for the keyword search).

this was one of around a half-dozen results:

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=4421

Last edited by stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn (2024-12-29 13:58:02)

mtbvfr · 2024-12-27 08:53:30

RedGreen925 wrote:

That is not what is needed

My sources.list file has the following uncommented lines:

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus main non-free-firmware
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-updates main non-free-firmware
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-security main non-free-firmware

Last edited by mtbvfr (2024-12-27 09:00:12)

mtbvfr · 2024-12-27 09:02:46

RedGreen925 wrote:

Set the BIOS time to UTC

That must be a feature of newer BIOS/UEFI systems. This Laptop has a BIOS from 2006.

I will try editing the adjtime file.

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · 2024-12-27 09:34:44

RedGreen925 wrote "set the bios time to UTC" because that is what most *nix distros expect.

your reply was confusing

That must be a feature of newer BIOS/UEFI systems. This Laptop has a BIOS from 2006.

you will need to set your bios time to UTC for the operating system to display the correct time without additional fiddling.

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/timezone/utc

mtbvfr · 2024-12-27 09:41:37

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn wrote:

your reply was confusing

Ah, now I get it. For some reason, I was thinking there was a setting in the BIOS to specify what type of time was being set in the BIOS when what he was saying was to use the UTC time for my Region and Location to set the time in the BIOS.

mtbvfr · 2024-12-27 09:48:33

So Folks, the Intel Boot Agent message hasn't appeared since installing the 500GB 7200RPM drive and installing Devuan 5 on it.

Boots Fast I guess; gets to the User Name screen in about 1 minute and after the password is entered about another 20 seconds for the Desktop to finish loading. Is that good?

The screen seems to be better quality than the one in the Lenovo L540 and its 16:10 which is much more useful for consuming vertical content.

Last edited by mtbvfr (2024-12-27 09:50:26)

RedGreen925 · 2024-12-27 12:37:32

BIOS to specify what type of time was being set in the BIOS when what he was saying was to use the UTC time for my Region and Location to set the time in the BIOS. big_smile

Yes as has been pointed out you set the time in the BIOS/UEFI to the offset from UTC for your time zone. For instance in mine it is set to 4 hours less than UTC as my offset is -4 this makes everything work properly when the systems use UTC as most all *nix systems use it, like Linux, the BSDs & MacOS. Only Windows usually defaults to using local time as the multitude of postings of "why does my clock change when dual booting" can attest to.

Last edited by RedGreen925 (2024-12-27 12:38:15)

mtbvfr · 2024-12-28 21:58:08

RedGreen925 wrote:

change the /etc/adjtime to say LOCAL

This is the option I used and System Date and Time is correctly displayed now.

Previously, I had tried the

hwclock -s

command but it didn't appear to immediately do anything. After what must have been at least 30 mins or so (and maybe a reboot in between) the system date and time was displaying correctly but then I saw the BIOS was different. I prefer the BIOS to match the Operating System whether there is Dual-Booting or not.

mtbvfr · 2024-12-28 22:26:29

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn wrote:

searched the forum for "changed its 'Suite' value …

So, I used the command

sudo apt-get update --allow-releaseinfo-change

and the Warning Message, regarding the Repository Indexes, is no longer displayed.

However, before I did that, I reloaded the Package Information and this time only the Note about daedalus-security appeared as above in Post #62.

What would have caused the other 2 Notes to no longer be displayed?

How is it that the Suite and Label values were changed and how can you confirm that the changes are legitimate?

I tried searching man pages but couldn't find what effects are established with the use of the "--allow-releaseinfo-change" option. Is this information recorded in a file of the OS too?

RedGreen925 · 2024-12-28 23:53:49

What would have caused the other 2 Notes to no longer be displayed?

It is only or should only be displayed when the base-files package is updated and the information in the os-release file changes.

root@9600k:~# cat /etc/os-release 
PRETTY_NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux 6 (excalibur/ceres)"
NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="6"
VERSION="6 (excalibur/ceres)"
VERSION_CODENAME="excalibur ceres"
ID=devuan
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.devuan.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://devuan.org/os/community"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.devuan.org/"
root@9600k:~# apt-file search /etc/os-release
base-files: /etc/os-release  
snip....

Check in your /var/log/apt/history.log to see if it (base-files) has been updated recently to tell if it should have displayed.

mtbvfr · 2024-12-29 03:12:37

RedGreen925 wrote:

It is only or should only be displayed

So far, I have uncovered the following:

Toshiba Tecra A7 after Install and APT updating

~$ cat /etc/os-release

PRETTY_NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux 5 (daedalus)"
NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="5"
VERSION="5 (daedalus)"
VERSION_CODENAME="daedalus"
ID=devuan
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.devuan.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://devuan.org/os/community"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.devuan.org/"

Created:  2024-12-27 15:06:20
Modified: 2024-09-12 16:16:07
Accessed: 2024-12-27 15:06:19

/var/log/apt/history.log

Last Update occurred starting with the following 2 lines:

Start-Date: 2024-12-27  15:06:19
Commandline: /usr/sbin/synaptic

It contained an entry for:
base-files:i386 (12.4devuan3, 12.4+deb12u7devuan1)

Previous Update occurred as follows:

Start-Date: 2023-07-20  02:57:27
Commandline: apt-get --yes --force-yes install dialog live-boot live-boot-initramfs-tools
Install: dialog:i386 (1.3-20230209-1)
End-Date: 2023-07-20  02:57:30

Live ISO filesystem.squashfs

/etc/os-release

PRETTY_NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux 5 (daedalus)"
NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="5"
VERSION="5 (daedalus)"
VERSION_CODENAME="daedalus"
ID=devuan
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.devuan.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://devuan.org/os/community"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.devuan.org/"

Modified: 2023-05-11 03:09
Accessed: 2023-05-11 03:09
Link Target: ../usr/lib/os-release

It did not have a Created DateTimeStamp.

/var/log/apt/history.log

Last Update occurred as follows:

Start-Date: 2023-07-20  02:57:27
Commandline: apt-get --yes --force-yes install dialog live-boot live-boot-initramfs-tools
Install: dialog:i386 (1.3-20230209-1)
End-Date: 2023-07-20  02:57:30

RedGreen925 · 2024-12-29 04:54:55

You have solved the mystery, it got updated at just past 3:06PM Dec. 27 2024 by synaptic when it installed the new base-files:i386 package.

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 2024-12-22 02:19:25

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

#55 2024-12-22 02:44:21

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

#56 2024-12-22 02:59:40

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

#57 2024-12-22 09:33:09

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

#58 2024-12-22 10:35:35

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

#59 2024-12-22 12:46:53

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

#60 2024-12-27 04:42:49

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

#61 2024-12-27 04:58:44

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

#62 2024-12-27 05:19:01

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

#63 2024-12-27 05:30:05

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

#64 2024-12-27 07:28:50

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

#65 2024-12-27 08:53:30

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

#66 2024-12-27 09:02:46

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

#67 2024-12-27 09:34:44

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

#68 2024-12-27 09:41:37

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

#69 2024-12-27 09:48:33

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

#70 2024-12-27 12:37:32

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

#71 2024-12-28 21:58:08

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

#72 2024-12-28 22:26:29

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

#73 2024-12-28 23:53:49

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

#74 2024-12-29 03:12:37

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

#75 2024-12-29 04:54:55

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

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