Re: Tar'ed Base System?

[Richard Hodges <rh@matriplex.com>]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Richard Hodges wrote:

> On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Michael Goetze wrote:
> 
> > If you didn't find anything on the main site, you weren't looking hard
> > enough. Try ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/binary-mips for
> > starters.

I thought I had a decent snapshot with:
  rsync -Lrvz ftp.us.debian.org::debian/dists/sid/main/binary-mips/\
         /mpeg/debian/binary-mips
But the installation failed when trying to install "adduser".

So I finally gave up and went for the Internet installation.  This
one went further, but failed with:
  "failure trying to run: dpkg --force-depends 
    --install /var/cache/apt/arch"

Hoping that the installation was mostly complete, I set up my Indy to
boot linux, but it stops with something like "cannot find inittab".
Booting into single-user did not help much, just to confirm that many
important files are missing.

I don't know where to go from here, but I would like to give some
tips to others who might run into similar problems on their SGI...

1.  When you use "bootp()" from the SGI prompt, be sure to add
    "ip=auto" to that line.  Otherwise, your NFS root may fail
    with error 128.

2.  The Debian "configure network" may trash your networking, leaving
    your installer unusable.  Instead of entering the information
    manually, allow it to use bootp.  Then use your ALT-F2 screen to
    fix /etc/resolv.conf

3.  If you boot into single-user mode, linux may not allow you to mount
    root read-write.  Even with "-f -o rw".  This is wrong behavior.
    If I use "-f", there should be no question.  JUST DO IT!  NOW!  If
    it damages file systems, or crashes the system, that is MY risk...
    Anyway, there is a way to modify files on the root filesystem in
    single-user mode.

    First, you need another partition larger than root.  Luckily, I
    set up / (sda2) with 100 megs and swap (sda3) with 200+ megs.
    In this case, "mount -o rw /dev/sda3 /mnt".  Then modify the root
    files under /mnt, then umount it.  Then "dd if=/dev/sda3 /dev/sda2"
    and "sync".