Re: Problems with installing debian 2.2
Veli-Matti Rautiainen <velraut@st.jyu.fi> writes:
> 10th time I noticed that I hadn't formatted all ext2fs partitions I
> had available, so now I formatted them all, about 1,4 GB total. Now
> it did write the LILO in MBR, and I installed the system normally.
> However, there were some ( something like about twenty ) error
> messages during install, those were about dependencies in some files.
> Those error messages were pretty much too fast to read, and
> the system continued to install anyway. I also chose advanced
> method of selecting packages, and this time, as I was in hurry to
> get the system up, I didn't install much programs. This was the
> first time I got the system up at all. However, there was not
> much installed, so I was not able to do about anything ( I don't
> know much about linux ). Because there were no X Window system
> so I decided to install it again.
Oh, that was silly. You can pull in more packages quite easily.
> 11th time was just like 10th, expect that this time I chose
> simple method of installing packages. I installed all GNOME stuff,
> all language developement, SQL developement, X window system and games.
> I installed about 2/3 - 3/4 of those packages available. This time
> it went OK, but when it started to unpack & install the packages
> ( pretty long session ) it unpacked & installed normally until it
> got to wwwaffle ( or something like that ) package, and then the
> system was locked, and there was no way to continue.
This is clearly hardware/kernel issues. Not much us boot-floppies
folks can do about that. It's either flakey hardware (loose RAM
chip?) or else should be filed as a bug against kernel-image-2.2.17 I
guess.
> 12th time was like 11th, expect that I thought that the locking up
> was due to the insufficient hd space again ( because I chose so
> many modules ), so I left out some. This time it installed fine,
> expect that there were still some ( about 20 ) error messages about
> file dependencies. Now I was able to configure X-window system,
> it detected all my hardware, etc. I got the system up again, but
> when I tried to start the X-window system it said that it doesn't
> support 24 bpp, which I have chosen as a default ( Red Hat 5.1
> which I used before does support that with the same hardware ).
> So, I changed it to 16 bpp, and then the startx script said, that
> it doesn't find a mouse, although I configured that during install.
> So I checked the /dev/ and there were no /dev/mouse, only /dev/usbmouse,
> although I haven't got usb at all in my machine ( that's probably due
> because I configured it wrong ). At this point I can't say much
> about the system, because I'm completely new to debian and pretty
> new to linux in general, so I can't tell which things are correct
> and which are not. I was able to play some nethack and compile some
> simple C++ programs.
Woo.
> During these installations, I've installed my old Red Hat 5.1
> many times again, in order to read my e-mail, and get some school
> related stuff done, and it has not shown any problems. One possibility
> is that there would be something wrong with my CDROM, so it doesn't
> read all the files correctly, but because I get the RH installed
> easily, I'm not sure about that. However, as a newbie, I can't tell
> if this is a bug or not.
Well, this tells me that your problem stems from the new 2.2 linux
kernels -- old RH 5.1 would use 2.0 kernels I think.
> If you still think I should file a wishlist for this, I can try
> if you tell me what that actually means. I probably can tell
> pretty accurately, what happened in my machine, and try to repeat
> that error, etc. but not much else.
I dunno. The thing to do would be to try to track down what hardware
device driver is acting bad and tell the kernel folks about it, if you
can.
When I have problems such as you describe, I start stripping out all
the extra hardware -- uneedded internal modems and sound cards in
particular.
Also check your bios settings -- be sure shadow RAM is off.
> One thing I'd like to know is that is it normal, that the installation
> program reports of missing dependencies during install ?
No, I don't think so. It's possible.
> If not, what
> are the possible reasons for that...I think the program should warn
> me in the case I install package X that requires also package Y.
> And because I'm installing from CDROM, the only other options
> probably are that there's something wrong with the CD, with my
> CDROM or with the image the CD was made from ?
That's possible too.
I'm sorry I can't be more specific.
--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
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