Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Preparing a laptop for sale

[Grant]

>>> New problem: Booted into DSLinux, my HD does not appear so I can't
>>> wipe it.  blkid and fdisk -l only show the USB stick assigned to
>>> /dev/sda which is how I accidentally wiped it in the first place.
>>> I'll try another distro on the USB stick.
>
> DSLinux couldn't find my HD because it needs the "sata" boot parameter
> explicitly passed.  However, after doing that it crashes while loading
> the sata module.  This is discussed online with no solution presented.
>
>> If DSLinux is what I think it is, it may have been (on hindsight)
>> rather obvious that it may not support the block device your system HD
>> is on or the filesystem used. The DS, afterall, has fairly predictable
>> hardware.
>>
>> Something like DBAN or SysResCD will have a better chance of
>> supporting a wider array of hardware.
>
> The problem with those two is I need something that can install to the
> HD after wiping it.  I also need something that can install on a 512MB
> USB key since my 8GB key does not seem to be bootable.  DSLinux was a
> flop as described above, so I'm downloading Puppy Linux now.  It's
> about 100MB, and it has the "Puppy Universal Installer" which should
> install to my HD.  Hopefully it fares better with my SATA hardware
> than DSLinux did.
>
> Also, in case it helps anyone in the future, unetbootin has a very
> annoying habit of failing to download the selected ISO, returning no
> error, and in fact reporting installation success.  The symptom of
> this is a boot menu with only "Default" available, which goes nowhere.
>  The solution is to download the ISO manually and point unetbootin to
> it.
>
> I'll report back with Puppy Linux results.

Puppy Linux has wiped the HD and installed to /dev/sda3, but I can't
get it to install GRUB to /dev/sda1.  I get:

I couldn't mount '/dev/sda1' read-write!

Working on it....

- Grant