0.93r6 install problems

[Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>]

Yesterday, I did my first debian install from the 27 Sep
boot disks.  That initial install and a session or two
went fine.  Last night, I was unable to reboot it from
the boot floppy.  I don't recall whether or not I had
more than one successful boot on it.

This morning I reinstalled.  Please bear with this narrative,
as I'm not sure what might be relevent and what not.  This
is from memory, but I think it's accurate.

Install went OK, except for some few suggested changes I'll
deal with separately.  "Expert mode", root on /dev/sda1.  I
have my swap on /dev/hda3 and don't recall where the install
procedure detected that.  I mistakenly rebooted without
configuring the system, and the install procedures allowed
me to do that.  I used my boot disk made yesterday, and boot
failed.

I rebooted the boot+root disks, mounted /dev/sda1, made a
boot disk (again neglecting to Configure, and I was allowed
to do that).  Same result.  I booted my 0.93R5 partition,
mounted /dev/sda1 on /mnt, and found that /mnt/etc/fstab
didn't exist.  Ah!  No Configure!

I rebooted the boot+root disks again, mounted /dev/sda1,
did Configure, made another boot disk, and rebooted again.
Boot failed.

I rebooted the 0.93R5 system and mounted /dev/sda1 on /mnt
again.  /mnt/etc/fstab looks OK.  "rdev /mnt/vmlinuz" says
the boot device is /dev/sda1, OK.  "cp /dev/fd0 x" and "rdev
x" says that the root device for the image on the boot floppy
is /dev/sda3.  I partitioned /dev/sda with a single partition,
and /dev/sda3 doesn't exist.

"rdev x /dev/sda1" and "cp x /dev/fd0" produced a usable
boot disk.

mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell)