Re: setup help....
Gregory Guthrie <guthrie@mum.edu> writes:
> I am new to debian,
Congratulations.
> and have a few questions.
>
> 1) boot reports SCSI: no device found (WD7000 SCSI Card).
>
> -- It is right(!), I have no scsi, and no scsi module in my /etc/modules.
> -- Why does it try to find one? is this OK??
The standard kernel is compiled with SCSI support compiled in - this
means that it can work on machines that, for example, have only SCSI
drives (anything used to access the rootfs really shouldn't be a
module). Seeing the error message is fine and normal, so long as you
don't in fact have a SCSI card. If it really bothers you, you can
build yourself a new kernel - see the HOWTO and instructions elsewhere
about that.
> 2) I find no man(1) command, and all the /usr/man/* pages are compressed,
> is some further installation step needed?
Being compressed is fine; to get the man command, you need to install
man-db. Last I checked, though, mandb had a bug that caused it to
fail if the perl package wasn't installed before it (the post-install
script uses the perl module Getopt::Long, which isn't one of the
default perl things installed by the base set)
> 3) At boot I get a mesage:
> lp: no device found
>
> I have teh standard parallel port..
Hmmm... This is a bit problematic. Unfotunately, I can't help you.
> 4) I loaded from CDROM, and at boot it recognizes it;
> hdc: FX001DE, ATAPI CDROM Driver
>
> How do I mount it?
> I tried mount -t isofs -f /dev/hdc0 /cdrom
>
> and lots of variations, (-t msdos, hdc1, hdc, ...),
> the mount doesn't complain, but does not make the device useable.
Have you tried:
mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /cdrom
With CDs, you don't use a digit after the device name because they
don't have a partition table the way hard drives do. Make certain to
unmount (via the 'umount' command) any incorrect mount entries (which
you can see by just doing 'mount') first. Also, be sure to unmount
your CD before using dselect. (see next question)
> 5) How do I modify the initial setup, e.g. further devices,
> do I re-run the recovery disk? or run "dselect"?
I assume you mean the bit in the install where you could select
various kernel modules to load at boottime. (nice text menus with
devices grouped by category, etc.) - use dselect to install the
package modconf, and then use 'modconf'.
> 6) How do I switch from a tty like interface to something... reasonable?
I assume by 'reasonable' you mean graphical. You configure and
install X; this is not always something for the faint of heart, though
it is much, much easier than it used to be. Actually, this could take
several messages all by itself. Let me go off and think about the
"one true way" to get X up and running on a Debian system - I did mine
in a sligtly odd way that may not be for everyone, and I don't
remember all the details besides that.
In the mean time, you might want to install pdmenu and mc - two very
nice text-based programs that let you do something other than type
commands at the prompt.
> 7) I see the FAQs on the CDROM, but they are not properly named, (although
> the trans.tbl knows this..), so I suspect they are there to be installed; how?
If you look at them from a Linux box, you will see the proper names
:). The reason you don't see the long names from Dos or Win95/NT is
this:
1) the iso9660 standard, which defines how data CDs are to be put
together, specifies that filenames shall be in the 8.3 format that Dos
uses (i.e. eight letter of name, three letters of extension) (although
I think it allows for version numbers; anyone know more?). This means
that every file on a CD must have a unique DOS-style name.
Fortunately, the standard also allows for extensions.
2) the Unix world uses something known as "Rock ridge" extensions -
these allow for things like owner names, permissions, and long names.
The file trans.tbl is part of these extensions.
3) Win95 (and probably WinNT) use extensions known as "Joliet" to put
long names on CDs - this scheme is based very closely on the way Win95
fits long filenames on top of non-CD DOS filesystems. (This scheme is
sometimes called 'vfat')
Linux can, with some coaxing, read the long names on Joliet CDs.
Presumably there's some utility that allows one to examine Rock-Ridge
CDs under Win95, but I don't know about it.
However, even without understanding the _extensions_ that another
operating system has put on top of the iso9660 standard, any machine
that understands the base standard can still see the short DOS names
and so you can still do most of what you want with the CD. (and so,
for example, you can read the FAQs from Win95 even if their names look
weird)
> 8) is there an archive of this mailing list?
The debian www mirror sites (http://www.debian.org/ and others) have
archives - look for a link under the "Support" page.
(Or just go to http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/) The search
engine on the archives should be working "real soon now".
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