deb file question
I am on my third (and last) go 'round trying to get Debian m68k to
install on anything, having literally wasted weeks! (I've installed a
half dozen other flavors of *nix without problems.)
I am trying to install on a Mac SE-30 with 32megs of RAM and a 700 meg
HD. I have the latest CD potato set for the Mac 68k.
I have read through every last month of the archives, page by page and it
would appear that only a tiny handful of people have successfully
installed Debian on this machine, and they don't appear to be talking
much about how they did it. <grin>
Most of the problems people seem to have encountered with the SE-30
involve freezes during the intial boot process when trying to start an
install. That is where I hang too.
One promising suggestion was that one should try different kernels as the
kernel selected apparently won't work with the SE-30. (Is this true?)
However, if the problem is that one cannot start the install process,
then obviously there are no Linux tools yet available to do anything with
the .deb files in which the other kernels are packaged, making them
unavailable. So just how do I try another kernel if I have no
Debian/Linux system with which to unpack those .deb files? Is there any
place I can download them in a format I can use?
It's been a couple of years since my last attempt to install Debian and I
had hoped there might be some improvement in the documentation. There
have obviously been changes, but improvement?...
For example:
6.3.3 Installing from MacOS....
<start quote>
6. At the MacOS desktop, start Linux installation process by
double-clicking on the "Penguin Prefs" icon in the debian directory.....
Go to the "Settings" item in the "File" menu and select the kernel and
ramdisk images under the kernel tab in the debian directory by clicking
on the corresponding buttons.....
<end quote>
<start rant>
There is no file called "Penguin Prefs"
There is no "image" called "kernel" (there is however a file, not an
image, called "LINUX", which several people/web sites have pointed out to
be the correct one)
There is no "image" called "ramdisk" (but there is a file, not an image,
called "ROOT.BIN", which again, several web pages have suggested is
correct)
Three file references are given in just that one paragraph and all three
of them are wrong! I find the rest of the install docs equally obtuse. No
wonder this distro is almost impossible to install. The instructions read
like a Chinese-English translation of a VCR owner's manual! (Please, if
anyone is so inclined, don't tell me about how its OK to produce bad docs
because the authors are doing it for free. It isn't.)
<end rant>
Anyhow, if anyone out there knows where I can find an ACCURATE and
detailed description of how to install this thing, or would like to share
their successful SE-30 installation experiences (in detail please), I
would be very grateful.
TIA
David Kachel
theMac Workshop
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