notebook install fails when formatting ext2 partition
Hallo all,
I have got a black and white 486sx notebook with 4 MB of RAM.
The Bios is reported as SystemSoft BIOS for 80486/86C388. Version 1.01
( R1.10 ).
For German readers: It is a PAComp notebook (now comtech).
I installed using this layout:
/dev/hda1 32 MB swap
/dev/hda2 ~300 MB ext2
/dev/hda3 ~5MB minix (temporary root partition during installation)
During initialization of the minix partition there blinks a message
that a code page could not be found (the message is blinking
so short, that it is impossible to read the whole message).
Everything works (reasonably) fine up to the formatting of the ext2
partition:
The swap partition is initialized and the temporary minix root is
copied without problems, too. The dinstall program is started, I "do
without a swap partition" and then try to "initialize a linux
partition". (There are some error messages when starting dinstall,
because the swap is already activated, etc.)
The initialization takes place (the program counts all the blocks ---
with or without the bad block scan --- with or without the notebooks
power management features enabled) and starts to write the
superblocks. After ~17 - ~33 out of XX the program stops.
The system is blocked, but not the keyboard (every character I type is
displayed) and virtual console switching still works (but same
problem on second console, that the system does not respond).
If I switch to the second console and activate it, during the
initialization of the ext2 partition, everything works fine.
This happens with disks-i386/2.0.10_1998-07-21.
Ok, after bypassing this, I run into a more severe problem:
I first tried to install with only a 32MB swap partition (and 4 MB
RAM) and failed to get a prompt, because various daemons report
"fork: Cannot allocate memory".
I then reinstalled with 64 MB of swap. And got the same problem:
Daemons report "Cannot allocate memory" and after swapping
to death, bash does not load because "xmalloc: cannot allocate 8 bytes
(0 bytes allocated)" and "fork: Cannot allocate memory" (with tecra
disks) or "egrep: memory exhausted" and than "/bin/sh: error in loading
shared libraries" (with normal disks).
This roughly happens at the same stage.
I can't even shutdown properly, because of "error in loading shared
libraries".
Any clues?
BTW: bad block scan did not yield any results.
TIA,
Grimaldi
--
Jens.Ritter@weh.rwth-aachen.de grimaldi@debian.org
KeyID: 2048/E451C639 1998/01/28
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