UDB installation report
Hi, everybody
I just wanted to tell you about my Debian installation experiences.
Yesterday I carried my UDB to the university and put it on the net in
order to try a fresh install. Until now I used some Redhat-4.1
installation and I wanted to give Debian a try. I am aware of the
fact that installation at this stage is bound to be complicated.
First of all I had to figure out which boot disks to use. Since I
have a working MILO on a 2MB partition, this was just a matter of
inserting a DOS formatted floppy with the correct vmlinux.gz on it and
boot from that. Par contre what was more complicated was to figure
out the correct boot parameters to pass. I eventually came up with
`boot -t msdos fd0:vmlinux.gz root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1
prompt_ramdisk=1', most of which I suppose is irrelevant. I would
appreciate if there were some kind of QuickStart file along with the
kernel images. We can relay on people finding SRM or MILO docs, but
the kernel command line parameters necessary should be noted
somewhere.
Well, it asked me for a root disk afterwards, and I used the one found
in the August 12 subdirectory without any trouble (barring unaligned
traps, that is. If these are not going to be fixed before release,
perhaps put a note somewhere saying, `don't be afraid of unaligned
traps'?).
Installation went relatively smoothly, just like on i386 where I have
done that several times before. Well, when installing from the
drivers and the rescue disk, no modules were found. I assume this is
normal?
Then, upon package selection, several packages could not be installed
due to `ncurses3.4' missing, or due to a dependence on `libc5'. This
last one is in the process of being resolved, AFAI understand. As for
the missing ncurses3.4 package, I finally found it in the
debian-incoming directory on ftp.de.debian.org. Is there a reason it
has not yet been integrated into the distrib, but several packages
dependent on it have?
I also downloaded a couple of packages from beezer and installed them
without problems. The font packages on master were recognized to be
newer than those on beezer:/.../to_master, though.
I installed igerman from the i386-tree, using --force-architecture.
Why isn't it in `all'?
I had to force deinstall of `libreadline2', on which my old bash
depended, before I could install `libreadlineg2' which, in turn, was
needed for the newer bash package. Use the `--force', Luke.
Took me a couple of hours, and the system seems to be working now,
which is very reasonable for a non-released install. Unfortunately, I
had to take my UDB back home without a direct net connection, so I
can't check. Will play around tonight, I hope.
That's about everything I remember right now. If anything of the
above is supposed to be reported as a bug, please tell me so and I
will check the exact settings at home and file a report. Anyway,
thanks for all the good work, I'm really glad I got that thing
working.
Cheers,
Alex
--
Alexander Jolk * jolk@ap-pc513b.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de * +49-721-608-3572
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