Re: woddy from disk install problem
On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 09:58:10PM -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have an install problem with woddy and would appreciate help to get it
> fixed.
Have you ever installed a debian system before? If not, I'd suggest you use
the stable version for installing, you can even get it on CD.
> Background:
>
> I hav a system with 2 hard drives, one scsi (sda1-4) and one ide
> (hda1-4). My currently running Linux system runs of the scsi drive and I
> am trying to install woddy onto the ide drive. I created the rescue,
> root and driver floppies, and all of thie is working. I downloaded all
> the packages in main/binary-i386 and contrib/binary-i386 and placed them
> on the ide drive where I want to install woddy.
You want to install woody on hda and you downloaded lost of files to hda to
use them for installing? I don't think this will work. One of the steps
while installing is "initialize linux partition", on my box (other arch
though) the partition is erased by that step, so no more downloaded files.
You want to put them on the scsi disk, _if_ you think you have to download
all those packages.
> When I am using my running system, as right now I mount the ide drive as
> /ideDr as follows
>
>
> # mount /dev/hda1 /ideDr/
>
> # mount /dev/hda4 /ideDr/usr
>
> and listing the distribution directory produces the following
>
>
> # ls /ideDr/usr/dists/woddy/main/binary-i386/
>
> Packages base editors hamradio math oldlibs sound web
>
> Packages.gz comm electronics interpreters misc otherosfs tex x11
>
> Release devel games libs net science text
>
> admin doc graphics mail news shells utils
>
> According to my thinking this is all I should need, as this is
> everything that's on the ftp site. However, according to the
> installation program I am doing something wrong.
You have downloaded _everything_? WHY? If you have such a fast net accesss,
why don't you use apt to download packages as you need them? Saves time,
bandwidth, the rainforest, and does not pervert the idea behind all the
tools. If you have no net access on that machine, look for the basedeps.tgz
thread here.
> Here are the steps I am following:
>
> 1.) boot the system from the rescue floppy
> 2.) load the root file system from the second floppy
> 3.) configure keyboard
> 4.) initialize the swap space
> 5.) mount /dev/hda1 to /
> 6.) mount /dev/hda3 to /home
> 7.) mount /dev/hda4 to /usr
you skipped initializing hda1, hda3 and hda4...
> 8.) install the kernel and modules from the rescue floppy
> 9.) try to install the base system
>
> and this is where things go wrong. When I try to let the installer find
> the release directory it is not found. When I point the installer to
> /target the release packages are not found. When I point the installer
> to /target/usr the release packages are not found. WHen I provide the
> full path i.e. /target/usr/dists/woddy/main/binary-i386 the stuff still
> isn't found. In all cases I get the following message:
Well, I don't think the installer was designed to get the base packages from
the partition it is installing onto. You'd better put them on a second
partition.
> This certainly beats the hell out of me. Any suggestions? I cannot put
> the packages on my scsi drive as I am running the 2.4.3 kernel there
> using the XFS file system which is not recognized by the kernel on the
> rescue floppy.
Lame excuse. Format a partition with a sane filesystem. Why don't you use
the "home" partition for storing the debs, install them from there, and when
you're done mount it as home partition (move the user dirs to that one).
But you do not have to download the whole distribution anyway...
> I would really like to get this going so I can create some packages and
> start the developer/maintainer application process.
I suggest you install stable. IIRC the application process does not force
you to install the unstable/testing boot-floppies to get processed (do you
know why there are called UNSTABLE?). After you installed unstable and if
you still really want to live on the bleeding edge, you have two choices.
Install unstable in a chroot, there are tools out there that help you with
that (debootstrap or dbootstrap? wanna-build also has something, there are
instructions in the list-archives, etc). This is the preferred option, if
unstable goes wild, you only loose your chroot (which you have backed up
before) but still have your stable install to work with. It also has the
advantage that you can use sbuild and your chroot to find all Build-Depends
errors in your packages easily (if you don't find them, the buildds will
come after you :-)
The second option is, upgrade stable -> unstable/testing.
apt-get dist-upgrade
See man page for details.
Christian
--
http://people.debian.org/~cts/
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