[RULE] Slinky and TinyX - Install Report

[Raymundo Baquirin]

I downloaded the sources and built TinyX according to Michael's instructions. 
 All the packages built with no errors after I updated freetype and 
fontconfig (I'm using RedHat 7.2).

To test, I needed to reinstall RedHat on my Fujitsu Point 510, so I 
downloaded the slinky 3.3 installer.  What worked for me was the install from 
an iso image.  Since I don't have a floppy drive for mounting the floppies, I 
copied the slinky and disk2 images to my windows partition and extracted the 
kernel (vmlinuz) and the initrd image (rootfs.gz).  Then I booted from a DOS 
prompt using loadlin, with the command line
        loadlin vmlinuz mem=31M initrd=rootfs.gz ramdisk_size=1536 root=ramdisk 
rw
Before running the setup script, I mounted my windows partition on /win and 
then loop-mounted the disk2.img on /mnt/floppy. Setup tried to mount /dev/fd0 
on /mnt/floppy, failed, but then proceeded to install.  The iso image I used 
contained the base packages, XFree86 packages and dialup packages.

After setup, I installed the TinyX packages.  However, when I start X with 
the X server pointing to Xchips I get the gray background briefly then a 
crash with the error message
        Int 10h (0x4F09) failed; 0x4f09 (unknown error)
If the X server is set to Xfbdev I don't get the gray background, just
        Error opening /dev/fb0
        : No such device

        Fatal server error
        No screens found

I checked, and I do have a device fb0 under /dev.

Going back to the base install, I tried the rpms install and I also tried 
setting up a slip connection to do a network install.  Neither worked for me. 
 Also, I didn't have ppp support even after the install, in spite of 
including dialup packages in the iso image.  To get ppp support I ended up 
compiling a custom kernel on my desktop machine then downloading and 
installing it on the laptop. Now that there is a slinky iso, maybe the 
install kernel could have ppp support and a ppp module could be provided.  I 
believe it  would make installing over a serial link possible. 
Also, when I use loadlin with the command line option mem=32M I get a kernel 
panic with the slinky install kernel that I used. Other kernels that I have 
used (a stock Slackware kernel and the custom kernel that I built) accepted 
mem=32M with no problem.  Maybe this is a hardware issue?

Thanks for putting up with this long post,

Ray