muLinux F.A.Q: Frequently Asked Question with (some) Fractured Answer

Michele Andreoli

1. Introdution

• 1.1 Copyright
• 1.2 Credits
• 1.3 Mantainer
• 1.4 Disclaimer

2. General, curiosities, tidbits of information

• 2.1 Why "MU" linux?
• 2.2 What was the main purpose behind the development of muLinux?
• 2.3 What are the biggest problems faced in the development of muLinux?
• 2.4 What are the advantages and disadvantages of muLinux with respect to other floppy-Linux?
• 2.5 What is the purpose of muLinux?

3. Technical

• 3.1 Every time the kernel boots and I have replied correctly to all the setup questions, everything suddenly stops and the text "login:" appears. What am I doing wrong?
• 3.2 I typed "startx", but nothing happened. Why?
• 3.3 Why do you not put in muLinux an X SVGA server, instead of VGA?
• 3.4 How can I format my floppies to hold 1722k in order to make the muLinux base and X11 disks?
• 3.5 Can I clone muLinux to my hard drive if I have a FAT32 file system?
• 3.6 Why doesn't muLinux provide a real authentication and login process?
• 3.7 The procedure for installation from DOS is too contorted: go into DOS-mode, unzip the archives, reboot, etc. Wasn't a good setup.exe better?
• 3.8 Is there any problem trying to run C applications compiled / linked at a
• 3.9 I have compiled (gcc) a hello.c application under my Red Hat 2.0.36 kernel host environment, but I am not able to run it on a muLinux 10r2 !?!?!?
• 3.10 Whenever I install muLinux the usual confirmation message after setting up an add-on XXX is: "Ooh ! I feel good. This XXX is OK." I'm sure we're all familiar with it. ;) Except, when I setup /usr from the boot floppy, I get a slightly different confirmation message: "Ooh ! I feel (relatively) good. This /usr is OK."
• 3.11 When I load startx on my laptop Mitac P100, the display is not full screen, it's just a rectangle in the center of the screen. Why?
• 3.12 I need a tool for login in on another machine... but without PASSWORD. But we can do that with samba (i hope :) ) and sshd .... I'm just asking that!
• 3.13 Can you tell me about LibC files, EXE files, and RPMs? Can I install them in mu?
• 3.14 I've noticed that everytime you come up with a new addon you have to change to 1st disk as well inorder to add it to the setup script. Would it be a good idea to have each addon have it's own setup script?
• 3.15 Where can I get the mulinux sources?
• 3.16 What are the differences between the different Swap possibilities:
• 3.17 What do I need to make an Internet connection ? (it seems that setting PPP and PORT is not sufficient).
• 3.18 Can you explain to me, DIALD set up, NAMESERVER, and NETWORK?
• 3.19 How could I print the screen ?
• 3.20 Do I, REALLY, need a SERIAL mouse to obtain Xwindows (via X11 addon). My PS/2 mouse doesn't work.
• 3.21 Once MuLinux is installed in UMSDOS, is it possible to gain room on my HDD by deleting some muLinux files or the whole directory ?
• 3.22 My hda is cut in a hda1 (dos) and a hda2 (dos) when i mount hda2 on /store, i can only read the names of the files that are on hda2 under 8.3 ; how can i have then in full format ?
• 3.23 Is there a way to avoid reconfiguring (or not) /usr and /ext and /x11 each time i boot from windows98 to my umsdos mulinux ?
• 3.24 When i start my X session, i get a small image, i.e. that the X destop doesn't come on the full surface of the monitor, but only on a small part of the monitor. What can i do to get a full X ?
• 3.25 How do I prevent changes in /etc/samba/shares from disappearing during a reboot?
• 3.26 I have mulinux operating on an embedded 486 with COMPACT FLASH (flash disk) and I want to prevent writes to the Compact fLASH dISK HDD. Can anyone tell me how I can write this to RAM instead of HDD.
• 3.27 Well, why mulinux cannot fork with a i386? Is fork() a i486 instruction?
• 3.28 How do we speed X-Windows without adding more memory?
• 3.29 Using Samba to mount a directory, I can only read files. Where's the problem ?
• 3.30 I'm using the 10r5 release but when i try to connect to the internet using pppd pppd -d -detach /dev/cuaX it returns the the kernel lacks PPP support. What should I do?
• 3.31 No matter what changes I make to /etc/X11/XF86Config' the
• 3.32 A better CD playing via pc-speaker?
• 3.33 I tried to create a second user profile but something was wrong so I got a lot of error messages, I was not able to have the second configuration and I deleted the first profile, too.
• 3.34 Your previous answer is very tight. I don't think a newbie would understand what he
• 3.35 XWindows runs really slow on my 386 4mb ram machine....
• 3.36 I have mu10r5 working in the the "ext2" configuration in a
• 3.37 What's the scope of the 'chroot' command?

4. Networking

• 4.1 I'm using the 10r5 release but when i try to connect to the internet using pppd pppd -d -detach /dev/cuaX it returns the the kernel lacks PPP support. What should I do?
• 4.2 I have problems to send mails by mutt. I can fetch the mails, but I cannot send them. I get the the mail back with the message mailer-daemaon. On SuSE 6.2 I also have mutt, and this works fine.

5. Installation

• 5.1 When I run mu, and I pass by the fdformat (I need to run this manually because the mulinux-fdformat asks for libc.so.5) I get this message, and I am not sure if this is a hardware-problem:
• 5.2 When I re-boot the PC with the installation disk inside, after a while I am told that muLinux can not be found and I am asked to specify in which partition the muLinux files are.
• 5.3 How do you copy the muLinux files on to the floppy disk? I get the error, "insufficient disk space".
• 5.4 Is there a way to start muLinux with a default profile selected at startup, so that it starts and begins to work immediately?
• 5.5 I don't know what that 16 ramdisk stuff means, but I do know that it doesn't consume any ram. I guess it means to have the ability to use 16 ramdisks.
• 5.6 When I try to boot, I get memory problems (well, duh) and then when I drop down to a shell, I get "cannot fork" when attempting to make swap space. I can't even ls or fdisk. All I can do is pwd. Any advice?
• 5.7 Question: which file in the USR section causes the command history and how is it initiated? When I don't setup USR, the command history doesn't work. I'd like some info on this.
• 5.8 Could someone tell me what arguments are available for miterm? Are there man pages? What arguments are used for dialing a shell account?
• 5.9 How can one reduce the required RAM, in case I want to use floppy #1 in a machine with 4MB?
• 5.10 The downloaded installation files are not on my notebook, but on my desktop. So I can't use boot.bat.
• 5.11 I got the mulinux-10r2.tgz and some modules. Now I really don't know how to get this archive on to a bootable floppy and install muLinux on to a fresh HDD. I can extract the archive to a floppy with arc under Linux, but that floppy won't boot? I don't use DOS or Windows.
• 5.12 Why, under DOS, can I see my addon in the directory C:\Linux\X11.tgz and why NOT when I am under Linux..
• 5.13 muLinux works pretty well, but I always have had problems with lilo during cloning process ext2fs. For systems with low mem, you can't extract SRV.tgz containing lilo... so you have to clone the basic mulinux first.
• 5.14 I didn't understand if it is possible install new applications with Mulinux installed on hard disk. If it is possible, what I have to do?
• 5.15 How to add a new application in muLinux?
• 5.16 After i've created a bootable floppy (makefd) and booted again, the system goes in halt after the message: /bin/scan cannot fork (twice).
• 5.17 I have download X11.tgz but I can't unpack it an put it on a disk. Using winzip, the archive only seems to contain itself (???!!) How to do ?
• 5.18 Is there an easy way of upgrading to the newest version of mulinux?
• 5.19 I would simply like to know where to put my cursor and which button to push to get to an "X11.tgz" file?

6. Inst

• 6.1 Which is the best way to create addon disks? I supppose it could be done after creating the BOOT disk, or with some of

7. tech

• 7.1 And one question, what is the deal with that MAN-addon? I think
• 7.2 Is boot_free in the first floppy the number of bytes that the user
• 7.3 I see on the screen " ./bin/ps: cannot open

8. Miscellaneus

• 8.1 I guess that goes to show that many do not read the "readme" or "help" files*embarrased grin*
• 8.2 I really like what I see about muLinux, although I haven't been able to install it yet (but that's a story for a different post). I'm following with great interest the whole tread about the new organization of basic muLinux in three floppies and I am worrying a bit that muLinux could become a kind of "normal" distribution.
• 8.3 fork() system-call and biology
• 8.4 Would the list administrator allow a "digest" mode (digest of all mails of a day to be sent in once)?

9. Other formats of this FAQ

• 9.1 The pure text format
• 9.2 The whole source archive