Re: Problems Installing Debian on a Sparc2

[jbiddier@usra.edu]

"Del Campo, Damian" wrote:
> 
> Thanks to those who've helped.
> 
> I think there must be something wrong with my CD ROM, I can install from
> floppies without problems. After the "partitioning" section, the "install
> Linux" section allows for varoius media but when I choose CD ROM nothing
> happens, ie the light doesn't even come on and you can't hear/feel the CD
> spinning, however doing a probe-scsi from the PROM and during the SILO
> initialisation, you can see the CD ROM detected.
> Either way, I'll get it happening off the floppies and then try and figure
> how to do it from the CDs. Or if there's some way of installing all the apps
> from the install CDs once the actual system is set up, then I'll do that. I
> can't be stuffed hand installing Gbs worth of software.
> 
> One more question, why is there a /boot mount ? Admittedly I've only ever
> used RedHat before so maybe this is standard but I've never seen it.
> 
> Anyway, thanks people for the help.
> 
>   Damian Del Campo
>   Software Engineer,  SAGRN Project
>   E-mail        Damian.DelCampo@team.telstra.com
> 

Well, for some reason my un-subscribe did not work. I am still on the
mailing list. I'll take it as a omen for now and un-subscribe later.

The /boot directory holds the kernel (vmlinux-<version>) and system map
(System.map-<version>. It does exist under RedHat, but it is not
requested to be it's own partition during the installation process.
RedHat will put "/boot" under the "/"(root) partition unless you create
the "/boot" partition. Oddly, Debian has the symbolic link vmlinux in
"/"(root) and not in "/boot" like RedHat and other Linux distributions.
It makes no difference for this is really all sorted out in the
silo.conf (or lilo.conf for PCs).  

I will attest to some of the responses concerning the use of floppies;
many SS2's do have crappie floppy drives and the installation can be
fustrating - but it can be done (I have done it). You may want to obtain
another Sun compatible internal (or external) CDROM (some of the old
SCSI Toshiba CDROMs do well.).



--J