Re: Installing on an IBM Thinkpad A30

[Heather <star@betelgeuse.starshine.org>]

> I have encountered a problem that was mentioned (although not answered)
> in December on the debian-cd and debian-boot lists. Here is the problem:
> 
> While trying to install 2.2r4 from CD onto my IBM Thinkpad A30, the installation
> hangs after "md driver 0.36.6 MAX_MD_DEV=4, MAX_REAL=8". The problem
> persists even when I try to boot using "linux thinkpad=floppy".
> 
> I am a complete linux beginner, so I have no idea what to do. I have
> tracked down 2 leads (besides the above mentioned posts in December,
> which pose the problem but did not draw any responses). The first is
> from an old posting at:
> 
> http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/msg.php3?msg_id=2491185&list=242
> 
> which suggests that I should disable the driver that is loaded after
> the md driver. I don't know how I would do this.
 
Hmm.  I don't have that model, but the first thing I'd try, is a different
set of debian boot floppies.  There are a few out there, for different
special purposes - they often have things chopped out, if they don't 
relate to their own purpose, and that might be good boot floppies without
you having to poke around inside one.

Failing that, there are various sneaky tricks for forcing debian onto a 
hard disk:
  * load up any "rescue" distro that works, then partition it and drop 'base'
    in... put a kernel package in, configure lilo yourself, and hope that 
    it works for the reboot (if this works it'll be just like you blew
    off the dselect phase during install;  have the debian CD in after the
    kernel starts loading, because it will expect to see it.)
  * run a rescue distro that contains an installer, such as LNX-BBC
    (it has a couple of debian installers - but you need to make a CD
     of it first, to boot from)
  * (last, and least fun) put it in another machine, load it, put it back

> The second lead is from someone's personal website which reads as follows:
> 
> "Debian won't install on the ThinkPad: the standard kernel freezes after
> "md driver 0.36.6 MAX_MD_DEV=4, MAX_REAL=8". Further research reveals
> it
> to be the SCSI probe in fdomain.c."
> 
> Again, I am too much a beginner to take this information and run with
> it!
> 
> Any advice would be sincerely appreciated.

best of luck


* Heather Stern * star@ many places...