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powerbook 17" install



I've just purchased a powerbook 17". I've tried (unsuccessfully) installing debian using various howtos on the Net. I managed to get the machine to boot and run the installer using the recent "boot-floppies" in the woody distro, but the installer had problems finding any hard disks. I decided to extract the kernel from the 2.4.20 deb package and give that a go. It works better in that the hard disk is now recognisable and I have managed to partition it and initialise the partitions using mke2fs and mkswap :)

Unfortunately the installer still doesn't recognise any partitions to mount, neither swap nor linux partitions. One thing I noticed which was different to previous installs I've performed on earlier model powerbooks and powermacs is that the hard disk is /dev/hdc and the dvd/cd is /dev/hda. I always have experienced it being the other way around. Could this be a problem during manufactur of the powerbook? ie. hard disk plugged into secondary master and dvd/cd plugged into primary master IDE interface by mistake or is this the way all new powerbooks come? Maybe it's something to do with booting dvds??? Anyway, I assume the new installer doesn't search for mount partitions on /dev/hdc, and if so, needs to be fixed (especially if my setup is the norm).

Any ideas where to go from here???

For some reason I can't nfs mount an intel box to copy my backup fs to my new partitions. wget fails too. I think this is because the .tgz file is 3.1GB and the busybox version of wget is not so capable. I have a macosx partition so I should be able to copy the file to it and hopefully I might be able to find a ext2/3 driver for macos so I can unarchive the .tgz files to my linux partition. Any one know of such a driver ???

Please CC to me as well as the list.
Many thanks,
Brendan Simon.






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