Re: Installing Debian sarge (beta4) on Cobalt

["El Bailador" <pepillo@gmx.de>]

I'm trying hard to get Debian "sarge" installed on a Cobalt Qube2,
but without results so far.
The machine is a standard Cobalt Qube2 (2800) with 2x16MB RAM
and 10GB harddisk, netbooting from a SuSE 8.1 Linux PC.
I'm using the files stored in
http://people.debian.org/~tbm/d-i/images/mipsel/daily/cobalt/netboot/
and watch the console output with "minicom" on the netboot PC.
Netboot works fine, but the installing process is really slow and hangs
frequently. Using the last files dated 2004/06/28 the install process
already segfaults before starting the formatted terminal screen:

[...]
setting up filesystem, please wait ...
umount: /initrd: Invalid argument
segmentation fault
segmentation fault
[loops]

So I keep on trying the files dated 2004/06/19. To handle low memory
I found the kernel parameters "noapic pci=noapci ramdisk_size=20000
DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low". The installation process runs up to
the partitioner, but after defining the partitions and mount points
it hangs by the message "Creating ext3 filesystem for /home in partition #3"
( I waited half an hour).
So I prepartitioned and preformatted the disk (directly connected to the
Linux PC) and repeated install. The partitions were recognized well,
so I used the option "use partition and keep data" instead of "format the
partition", defined the mount points and selected "write to disk".
Now the installation hangs by the message "Checking swap space in
partition #2". I also tried another harddisk and got the same problems.
Memory problems of the partitioner? 32MB is the highest
expansion stage of the Qube as sold by Cobalt, it also came with 16MB!
And Cobalt memory is still expensive (72pin SIMMs 3,3V)!
Any solutions/ideas?
Thanks!
-- 
Pepillo