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Re: Re: Unable to make Linux bootable from HD or make boot floppy



On Sun, 2002-06-16 at 18:30, Mark Fickett wrote:
> Hello again,
> 
> >> I am working on installing Debian 2.2r6 on a Packard Bell 
> >> Intel machine, which has a Pheonix BIOS, 23.0MB RAM,
> >
> >23MB RAM?  That's odd.  Is 1MB "stolen" for the video adapter?
> 
> It seems that the 23MB is just for Extended RAM; it's 24MB 
> total for System, Extended, and Shadow RAM.

That sounds more like it...

> >> Hard Drive, a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive, and a Matsushita 
> >>CD-ROM drive
> [...]
> >> When configuring device driver support, I install sbpcd for my 
> >> matsushita CD-ROM drive, and have tried also installing
> >
> >Are you sure the matsushita it plugged into the Sound Blaster 
> >card?
> 
> I haven't any idea if it's plugged into the Sound Blaster card. 
> How would I find out?

"Crack" the case and eyeball it.  Why did you initially think
to use the sbpcd driver?

[snip]
> >> The drive was giving me problems before (rawrite2.exe gave 
>>me "general failure reading drive D" several times, but would 
> >>go 
> >
> >Drive _D:_???  rawrite2.exe should be writing to A: or B:.
> 
> rawrite2.exe was writing to A:, D: was the CD it was reading from.

Duh.  My bad.

> >>The partitions are 
> >> /hda1, which is 10MB at the beginning of the disk, a Primary >>linux 
> >> ex2 partition marked bootable and mounted as boot, /hda2, a 
> >> 30MB Primary linux ext2 partition which is root, and a 388MB 
> >> Linux Swap partition, also Primary.)
> >
> >This must be changed.  On a very small disk like this, try this:
> >hda2: Primary ext2 48MB _at_the_end_of_the_disk_
> >hda1: Primary swap Everything else, and make it bootable...
> 
> I've changed that as you recommended.

Good.  You noticed that the swap disk is 2x RAM?  Thought so...

> >Could the floppy drive be whacked after this long?
> 
> I doubt it's whacked; it seems to read perfectly well, and from
> what I can tell was also writing correctly.

That's still part of my earlier "oops".

> I've now retried: I did everything the same as before, except 
> with the new paritions. When I try "Make Bootable Directly 
> from HD," there is again the LILO failure. When I try "Make 
> boot floppy," however, I get something new. It goes to a black
> screen with white text, and says:

Progress!!

> Formatting the floppy...
> Measuring drive 0's raw capacity
> warmup cycle: x 200xxx 200xxx [replaced by 'In order to 
> avoid...' and the xs are numbers that change]
> In order to avoid this time consuming measurement in the 
> future, add the following line to /etc/driveprm:
> drive0: deviation=720
> CAUTION: This line is drive and controller specific, so 
> it should be removed before a new drive 0 or floppy controller.
>
> Formatting/Verifying Cylinder 1-80, head 0/1

If I remember properly, I got the same messages.

> After cylinder 80, it goes back to dbootstrap and shows 
> me the "creating filesystem on the floppy..." message, 
> and as before fails there, with the "Creation of the boot 
> floppy failed. Please make sure that the floppy was not
> write-protected, and that you put it in the first drive. 
> Try another floppy if the problem persists." nessage. 
> (Just to be sure, I tried, and the boot floppy doesn't 
> boot. ::laughs:: ) I also checked Ctrl-Alt-F3, and it has 
> the same messages as before, when it didn't write anything 
> to the disk, and just failed at creating a filesystem.

Just out of curiosity, are you booting off the CD?  I.e.,
how are you booting in the 1st place?  The old drives are 
_slow_ (4x at MOST) and as Kent West reminds me, are 
probably temperamental with CD-Rs as opposed to factory-
burned CDs, and I guarantee you that TuxCD burns CD-Rs.

By any wild chance, is there a network card in the box, and
are you connected via broadband internet?  Network 
installation is really easy...

-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ron Johnson, Jr.        Home: ron.l.johnson@cox.net         |
| Jefferson, LA  USA      http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81     |
|                                                             |
| "Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea   |
|  which could only have originated in California."           |
|  --Edsger Dijkstra                                          |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+


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