System:
~2000 vintage HP Vecta XU, 6/200, system D4365N, dual Pentium II
processors, 64 MB RAM, three hard drives - 200G IDE, two 1.3 G SCSI (Quantum
Fireball), network card, no USB
The most
common outcome of an installation session is that the bootup step at the end
of the session results in the letters "GRUB" appearing in the upper left
corner of the screen with the blinking cursor to the right of the "B", and
nothing else. The system does not respond to any keystrokes, or combination of
CTRL-<key>, ALT-<key>, etc. It seems like the system is waiting
for keyboard input, but the keyboard is not enabled. If I had a responsive
keyboard AND I knew what to type, this could be an acceptable outcome, since
it does occur most times.
What I've
tried: All combinations of discs (all three drives plugged in, each one
separately, all combinations of two drives). The drives all appear to be
accessed but the boot ultimately fails as described
above.
I've tried
most combinations of answering the partitioning questions and placement of the
boot sector.
The failures
are not all as stated above; it's just the most common outcome. Other
results are "GRUB" being continuously written to the screen, until I
power off.
I was able
to get the boot to succeed once, but that particular system build led to other
problems causing me to attempt a second install. This one time the result was
that the system would, after powering on and all the verbiage of the boot up
process, presents me with a login prompt, accepts my login and allows me to
use the system. I was able to run with this system for a couple of weeks,
loading packages, etc. until I filled the discs and had to start over.
The disc full issue occurred because the IDE drive (most of the system's
capacity) was not mounted. I did not realize this until the disc full failure.
The version
of Debian is 2.4. I have a 15 CD set, purchased in roughly 2004. Last week I
downloaded disc image 1 of Debian 6.0 in hopes that the boot problem has been
fixed, but the results are the same.
Thanks,
Mike
Tremblay