Laptop SL6-CLONE ?

[Xstack]

Thought it might be a good idea to have SL6 also on Extensa-5620 laptop.

However, the install-DVD.iso used for desktops broke during the installation -- got to a point something like " ... Detecting hardware ..." then hung with a blanked-out screen.

Bright idea then was to just clone a desktop SL6 system-partition onto the laptop, having already done this successfully between non-identical desktops. This way I also get months worth of re-configurations, fixes, customisations, downloaded-software all in one hit, with usually just a few re-configs to tidy up.

And yes, I could boot into laptop-SL6-clone via SG2D. This time, however, the keyboard is screwed up, and I cannot fix the stuff that needs re-tweaking. In a terminal, for instance, about 8 alpha-chars are mapped to numbers, and my efforts to rectify this via mouse-pointing in GUI tools all fail.

Then another bright idea is to install the baby-SL6-LiveCD (which works fine) to the HDD, to at least see if the laptop is compatible with SL6. And yes, no problem, I get a good install & proper keyboard etc. Unfortunately, apart from being too much of a baby to be useful in itself, it also enforces unwanted ext4. However, it must surely now have spec files appropriate to this laptop which could be ported over to the clone I am thinking. Ah, but what files/specs are they?

Any more bright ideas anyone ..?

[helikaon]

Hi there,
regarding your question, there is not much stuff you can port, since the problems you described looks like problems with HW and linux has modular kernel, meaning it loads drivers as it needs (which is great advantage compared to windows, where any HW change, e.g. motherboard is usually disaster).

But, there is one thing, that could help - "xorg.conf" file.
By default the X server in SL6 doesn't generate it, but you can create it yourself by running:
"Xorg -configure"

Then have a look inside it, state correct devices (vga, monitor, mouse, keyboard..), try to reboot laptop with this, if it works, you can use it in new installation.
Also, another thing to try is to create kickstart file - from the working installation on you laptop and try to run install with things stated in this kickstart file ..


cheers,

[Xstack]

OK .. couple of things to look at there when opportunity presents itself. Not familiar with 'kickstart' at all, so will need to bone up on that.

Thanks.

It occurs also that some kernel-spec-arguments to grub could help. I notice a long list of these in the default SL6 grub installation and wonder where they came from (TUV?) or how they come to be determined?