chicken and egg problem with installation on a floppyless system
Hi there,
Ive been trying to install DEBIAN onto my laptop for quite a while now.
at one point i did succeed but now im screwed and have run out of ideas.
in a nutshell:
i have a compaq contura aero 4/25
this machine has an external pcmcia floppy drive
i also have a pcmcia ethernet card for it.
the computer will only recognize the floppy if it boot with it
in the slot - BUT then it doesnt recognize the presence of the slot
even if i take the floppy out.
in order to have the computer recognise the pcmcia slot, i have to
boot with the floppy out. the ethernet card causes no such problem.
with the ethernet card in or out, the computer recognizes the presence of
the pcmcia slot.
Now for the problem:
a few months ago, i installed debian using the 2.0.6 kernal.
i made a set of boot/root/base/modules disks and successfully installed
everything i wanted [or could fit onto my 170 MB drive].
now, i bought a new 1.3GB drive and want to move everything over.
Here is what i have tried
0) use the old 2.0.6 setup to contact ftp.debian.org
and make a new set of boot/../ disks.
1) physically install the new hard drive.
2) boot the computer with the floppy in and start feeding in the new
disks.
3) now since the floppy is in, the computer refuses to recognise that i
have a pcmcia slot - so it wont load/configure the proper kernel modules.
4) i cant get the kernel source and the new modules into the computer by
hand since my only means of data ingress is through the floppy and
the kernel .deb package is > 1.44MB.
5) i retreated to the 2.0.6 disk set that i had saved from before.
6) i reinstalled that set successfully.
7) having much more room on the hard disk, i resolved to update all
packages to more recent rev levels.
8) when the pcmcia packages came over [via ftp] something went wrong.
9) now ive lost pcmcia support - ie the ethernet card wont work - so
no more ftp - so i cant recover the previous state.
10) i could reinstall from step 5) above. but i would like to bootstrap
up to the current rev level. any hints?
it seems to me that i just need to do things in the proper order and
i cant seem to figure this out.
my news server is a bit dicey to work so please email any replies directly
to me [ill post a summary if somebody indicates that it would be a useful
thing to make public]
thanks in advance for your help...
[oh and by the way, im in a bit of a rush to do this as i am leaving the
internet on saturday to be with my wife who is expecting twins anyday now...
i know its a bit much to ask for help - and to ask for it fast - but
please....if i can be helped - help me.]
-Ketan
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what came first DEBIAN or the FLOPPY?
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