Re: cant configure s390 installation

["Shimon Lebowitz" <shimonl@iname.com>]

Len, 

> What is Daemon-tools and is this machine running Windows or some kind of
> unix?

Daemon-tools is a package on Windows that creates
emulated CDROM drives. Think of it as similar to
"mount -t iso9660 someimage.iso /mnt/virtualCD"
(I hope I said that right, I am not so linuxified yet).

> > linux01:/mnt/PC-cd/dists# ls -al
> > total 10
> > dr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root         8192 Sep 22  2004 .
> > drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root         8192 Sep 22  2004 ..
> > -r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root          266 Dec  2  2003 TRANS.TBL
> > -r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec  2  2003 frozen
> > -r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec  2  2003 stable
> > -r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec  2  2003 testing
> > -r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec  2  2003 unstable
> > dr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root         8192 Dec  2  2003 woody
> > 
> > *** Aha! there IS a "stable", but it's a file, not a directory.
> > *** and there is also a "woody" directory.....
> > *** Let's see what is in /woody
> 
> Ah, I guess you must be running a defective OS (probably windows) that
> doesn't understand the concept of symlinks, which is what stable,
> testing, frozen and usntable are.  You must have working symlinks on the
> nfs share for the installer to work.

While I would be happy to agree that Windows is not the 
be-all and end-all of PC operating systems, I think it is a
bit unnecessary to start saying things like "defective OS"
here. It is neither friendly (to me, not Gates) nor useful.

Thank you for pointing out that it is impossible to use
the Debian CD without a working unix style host.

There went any plans I might have had of installing it.

> > 
> > So, what do I do now, to configure my s390 Debian system???
> 
> Use a real OS (a unix one) to host the CD for NFS since you need a valid
> unix filesystem for the installer to access over NFS.  What a Windows PC is
> likely to simulate will not be good enough.
> 

Well, more derogatory comments about Windows won't get 
me anywhere, while building a CD usable on the 90% of
the PCs in the world might have.  Oh well.. 

AH!! Wait a sec.. I just had an idea!

What if I ftp my ISO image file of the Debian CD from
Windows into my old s390 SuSE 7, mount it there 
(with that "mount" I wrote at the beginning of this email), 
and use SuSE as my  NFS server to install Debian...
Does that sound like it would work?

Thanks (really!) 
Shimon