I recently "rescued" an old P-166 laptop for use as a Debian system.
There is a question lurking in all of this, though much of this post is
of a "How To" nature.
Lacking a CDR or functional networking (the PCMCIA network card was
unsupported under the existing Win98 install and several GNU/Linux
floppy systems), and finding I couldn't get a boot floppy to work (this
*has* to be made easier somehow), I found the best method for
installation was:
- Boot system with Tom's Root/Boot (http://www.toms.net/rb) [1]
- Mount HD.
- Swap floppies to copy in the base tarball. Realizing halfway
through that I'd not yet repartitioned the HD or formatted it for
GNU/Linux ;-) Dumbass.
- Create another eight RAMdisks and mount them, copying the image
segments onto these filesystems. (I *love* the flexibility
GNU/Linux gives you). For the curious, for ramdisks 4-11, iterating
and changing disknumber and mountpoint as appropriate:
$ mkdir /mnt/rd{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}
# Repeat for each RD:
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ram4 bs=1024 count=4096
$ mke2fs -b 1024 /dev/ram4 4096
$ mount /dev/ram4 /mnt/rd1
Note that ramdisks are limited in number and size at boot (TRB gives
you sixteen of 4096 KiB, using three for its own purposes).
Overflowing the size of the ramdisk does Bad Things, hence the
explicit size bounds on the 'dd' and 'mke2fs' commands above. TRB
utility syntax differs slightly from the usual.
- Partition and format HD. Incidentally: /boot, /, swap, and an
extended partition with /tmp and /usr. I've symlinked /var and
/home under /usr.
- Copy image fragments back to HD, catenate them togeter, unzip and
untar.
- Chroot into the base system:
$ cd /mnt/hd
$ chroot . bin/bash
...at this point you've got an unbootable, but otherwise largely
functional, Debian system. First thing you want to do is remove
/sbin/unconfigured.sh, which will keep the system from booting once it
_is_ configured. I added a few additional useful system files:
- /etc/fstab
- /etc/resolv.conf
- /etc/hosts
- /etc/lilo.conf
- /etc/apt/sources.list
...and ran tzconfig
Install a kernel and PCMCIA support from debian packages (use the
'split' utility to chop into 1440 KiB fragments if necessary). Catenate
if necessary, and install. In this case, a comprehensive precompiled
kernel, pcmcia-cs, and pcmcia-modules for the selected kernel.
At this point, you should be able to run 'lilo' and boot your system.
Configure PCMCIA (IIRC it was dpkg --reconfigure pcmcia-cs, but I could
be wrong here), and you should see das Blinkenlights when you run:
$ /etc/init.d/pcmcia start
...and insert the PCMCIA network card. Correct network, gateway, and
DNS server settings will increase joy markedly.
From here on out it's a cakewalk.
$ apt-get update; echo y | apt-get dist-upgrade
...will freshen up your system. If you're converting from Potato to a
later distro, do so now. Watch out for minor bugaboos (like the fact
that PCMCIA breaks horribly -- the bug tracking system has details under
pcmcia-cs and other packages).
Now start installing what you want on the system via apt-get, dselect,
aptitude, or your preferred aptoison, and enjoy.
The question (I *said* there was a question) -- what particular steps
are required for configuring a base Debian installation. Best I can
recall, the Debian install basically looks for:
- keyboard
- language
- time zone
- networking (this appears to be in the ipupdown package)
...and a few minor details such as partitioning (which I prefer doing in
advance anyway). In all, not much that can't be done by hand,
particularly by someone who's been down the road before.
The option of slapping a base image onto a partitioned disk and
installing it by hand seems almost preferable (and in some cases,
unavoidable). The Debian installer itself is dbootstrap, but doesn's
appear to be readily available outside the installation system itself --
I couldn't find it lurking elsewhere in Debian, or pull anything called
'dbootstrap' from any of the install disks at my disposal. Or am I
missing something obvious?
Peace.
--------------------
Notes:
1. Thanks again, Tom, that's an ass-kicking tool you've got.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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