Debian Woody on IBM Thinkpad X22
Hi everyone,
This is a request for some advice/help - but first
the good news and some information on installing
Woody on an IBM Thinkpad X22 for anyone who is
having problems:
As a newbie I have found Debian Woody excellent
for my Thinkpad X22. It installed without hitches
and I found it easy to upgrade the xfree86 to 4.2.
In fact Debian is proving far easier to use than
my first dabble with Suse 7.1 which was a
nightmare to upgrade. So my only tiny
contribution to our community and other newbies so
far is to say that I can strongly recommend Debian
as a distribution for the X22. Thank you
<deselect>, <apt> and the Debian team of
developers.
I'm using a set of Woody Testing CDs from May. The
X22 boots fine from CD ROM, but I found by trial
and error that you must use the CD#3 and enter the
following option at the command line <linux
thinkpad=floppy> to build Linux (use the F2,F3,F4
etc keys to hop around and read the options). I've
noticed Googling the web that quite a lot of
people seem to have a problem getting their CDs to
work on IBM Thinkpads and I've not seen this tip
or an explanation why it is necessary anywhere. It
would certainly be good for the Debian community
if someone more knowledgeable than I could give us
an explanation and post this tip somewhere
appropriate for others to use - perhaps with the
aim of letting more peole know that Debian is a
good choice for Thinkpads. If I get an answer I
will post it on the IBM Thinkpad X22 mail list for
others to read.
OK, now I hope someone could advise me on what
I've done wrong and how to put it right. I used
xconfig (what a fabulous application) to build a
new kernel under the instructions Section 9.6 of
the < Installing Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 For Intel
x86> manual (Thank you Bruce Perens and co -
really helpful manual) and everything worked like
a dream with kpkg building everything for me
etc. - you know the score but tthis email is also
about encouraging other newbies like me.
When I boot into the new kernel (2.4.18) I get the
following during booting:
(>=new line)
...
Activating swap.
Checking root file system...
fcsk 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
>
fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while trying
to open /dev/hda8
>
/dev/hda8:
The superblock could not be read or does not
describe a correct ext2 filesystem.......you might
try running
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
>
fsck failed. PLease repair manually and reboot.
>
I have swap at /dev/hda5,
boot at hda7 (ext2),
root at hda8 (ext3),
etc.
everything but /boot is ext3 and when I boot back
into the original Woody kernel 2.4.18-bf2.4 using
LILO the system works fine
Things I think I might have done to break it:
with xconfig I selected (amongst other things):
ext3
devfs
I also tried to set up GRUB prior to this and may
have set GRUB root to hd(0,7) instead of hd(0,6)
but I can't see how this is an issue because the
system boots fine with the original kernel. I also
did a check of the integrity of hda8 under the
original kernel and that was fine.
I wonder if it is my attemp to enable devfs that
is causing the problem.
I'd be very grateful if someone has the time to
enlighten me, but thanks for reading thus far
anyway.
Yours,
Simon
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