Installation of Debian after a RH6.0 install
Hi Guys (and Gals)
I presently have a 164UX/BX4 system (i.e. ruffian), which presently has NT on a 2G FAT partition, that (dare I say it) I wish to keep, and then a RH6.0 installation scattered over another half dozen or so partitions (the contents of which I have no intention of preserving even a single byte of). I boot into Linux via MILO (of the same age as RH6.0). Don't ask me whether I have ARC or AlphaBios, as I can't remember how long ago it was I last saw the boot screen.
I wish to be rid of the evil which is redhat 6.0 (*), and rather than play disty version-number wars, or "my installation is 2GB bigger than yours", I'd rather migrate this machine to Debian.
So, I've had some hairy-scary moments with MILO in the past. I have forgotten how I even installed it, let alone how to configure it. Will I need to reinstall MILO, or reconfigure it, in order to install and boot Debian? I am fully prepared to keep the same root partition (I consider the best thing about my current system to be my choice of partitions). If so (runs around flapping arms in panic) help! (I can read - web references are good enough, I'm online 24/7 on my other machines, so can read and hack, try again, read and hack etc.)
Milo resides on my FAT partition, doesn't it?
I simply need to point the Bios console to the new location?
I plan to install with the .tgz base system files on what was and will eventually be my /home partition, but I fully appreciate that the install process must not touch (write to) that partition during the install process (I'll very temporarily have /home on the / partition, I am happy adding fstab lines on my own afterwards).
With all this ARC/AlphaBios/whatever plus Milo nonsense, where do I boot from, and how? I know it's either section 6.8 or 6.9 in the documentation, but is it both? Do I do 6.8 and then 6.9?
In 6.9 it says I don't have to use a floppy, but surely I can't "boot" off my old /home partition can I?. How do I then tell Milo that all the info it used to know about my RH system is bogus? (As I said, I've not touched Milo for donkey's years, and haven't got a clue how I set it up.)
Anyway, you'll get a flurry of panicky e-mails tomorrow morning (US time), as that's when I'm gonna give it a go...
It appears the documentation is pretty good, but I always like to have fine details clarified before I do anything potentially dangerous...
Cheers,
Phil
(* Some of the redhat alphalinux advocates have called it far worse than 'evil', but I'm too polite)
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