Re: Defend Debian

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@grep.be>]

Op di 04-02-2003, om 18:58 schreef Carr, Chris:
> Hello Pete,
> 
> I spent three hours last night trying to help my dad install Debian. Unless
> I'm more stupid than I realise, there is a major flaw in the Debian
> installation heuristic, so I'm copying this to debian-boot@lists.debian.org
> in case it counts as a bug. If not, perhaps you can defend it for me! 
> 
> The situation: we have a reasonably modern PC with Windoze occupying 16Gb of
> a 20Gb disk, called the CWC. There is a much older PC functioning as a
> "router" - this one happily runs Slackware and shares the cablemodem
> connection using NAT. (It also acts as a print server.) There is a 3rd
> Windoze-only PC on the network, called the CFC, but it doesn't feature in
> this little story.
> 
> So, we decide to install Debian on the CWC. We decide to do a net (HTTP)
> install, since the cablemodem is blindingly fast and we've never done one
> before. We boot into Windoze, fire up CuteFTP and download the following: 
> 
> ..../current/install.bat 
> ..../current/linux.bin (kernel image)
> ..../current/dosutils/loadlin.exe
> ..../current/images-1.44/root.bin (initial ramdisk image)
> 
> Off we go. Kernel boots fine, loads the initrd fine. We step through the
> install, sorting out swap space (hda5) and creating and mounting a root
> partition (hda6). We get to "Install Kernel and Driver Modules" and find no
> net option - we try "Configure the Network" but this Debian kernel hasn't
> detected the network card (a D-Link DFE-530TX). 
> 
> So we go back to "Configure Device Driver Modules" thinking, no problem,
> we'll pop in the module and be off. The modules are of course not there
> because we didn't download them, so we go back into Windoze and fetch
> 
> ..../current/drivers.tgz
> 
> Then we start over (from install.bat) and step through again to the same
> place. We use "Mount a Previously Initialized Partition" to mount hda1 on
> /target/mnt/hda1, in order to gain access to the modules.

That was your error.

The 'mount a previously initialized partition' step refers to mounting a
linux-formatted partition as your root ('/') partition (or, once your
root partition is mounted, on any other mount point, of course).

You don't want to install Linux on your Windows-partition, you want to
install linux on /dev/hda6. Thus, you should indeed choose 'mount a
previously initialized partition', but mount /dev/hda6 instead of
/dev/hda1. When you get to the step of installing the kernel and
modules, there should be an option of installing from hard disk...

This is not really a bug in the install system, it's merely a
misunderstanding at your side...

-- 
wouter at grep dot be
"An expert can usually spot the difference between a fake charge and a
full one, but there are plenty of dead experts." 
  -- National Geographic Channel, in a documentary about large African beasts.