Re: Installation hangs (and other problems)
Here's some further info I got, apparently from Andrew Martin Adrian Cater
<amacater@galactic>, along with some questions/comments by me. Since the
return address didn't work, I'm hoping he will catch it here. (Also, I'm
trying another address).
Just so it doesn't get buried, the highlight is "don't do a direct install
of xfree86 using the graphical tools from the CheapBytes CDs."
[I wrote, in response to his reply...]
Thanks for some really useful info. I have a couple of questions, and a
comment.
On handling the multiple CD's, you [Andrew] write
>Load the first CD: take what you can from it, then load what CheapBytes calls
>"extras". A lot of work has gone into fixing this for the next release: in
>the interim, take the CD's individually.
The point I ran into trouble was where it asked for the path to the root
(e.g., .../stable).
Whichever CD I put in, it won't find everything, right? Or were you
suggesting entering "none" for that (as I did) and then swapping CD's when
prompted for the individual component directories?
Or, on the third hand, are you suggesting making 3 independent passes
through the whole dselect routine?
Is the fixing you refer to in Debian, or the CheapBytes distribution? Or
is it that Debian needs a new option to handle archives split across CD's?
I thought copying all 3 CDs to disk would get around the problem, but
apparently the symbolic links make a copy occupy far more than 650Mg. So I
gave up.
The comment: I'm trying to minimize /, so I need other partitions for all
else. The way the installation goes, it seems to require separate
partitions for each mount point (/usr, /home, /var) to avoid having them
dumped onto the root partition. I know I could have just one extra
partition and use symlinks, but I don't know if the installation scripts
would go for it.
One more question: The graphical xfree is broken on Cheapbytes because they
have a bad or dated copy? because it doesn't run from a CD? some other
reason?
At 09:45 PM 1/23/99 +0000, you wrote:
>On Sat, Jan 23, 1999 at 11:41:33AM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote:
>> I just tried my first install of Debian. It didn't go very well.
>> Fortunately, I did it in the spirit of a trial run.
>>
>That's OK - perhaps I can get you a bit further
>>
>> I have a Pentium 100, 64 MG Ram, and a recently added 13.6Gig Maxtor hard
>> drive + 2 older drives. The install targeted the new drive, which is drive
>> 0. I used the Debian 2.0 CD's from CheapBytes. I had run Maxtor's
>> MaxBlast program, which sticks "EZ-BIOS" in the boot sector to overcome
>> BIOS limitations.
>> I booted off the CD. I tried to give drive parameters at the boot prompt,
>> but it wouldn't take any of the syntaxes I tried were accepted.
>>
>> cfdisk seemed to allow the creation of many logical partitions. I thought
>> they all needed to be within an extended partition. Is that not the case?
>> At any rate, I created logical partitions to hold /, /usr, and swap.
>IMHO Stick with two partitions unless you really need to split out /home for
>lots of users. If you have a separate /, this only needs to be small: other
>wise use a main partition and a swap partition.
>> I elected to install modules for Win95, ppp, a.out, ppp over parallel
>> ports, and some others.
>If you are planning to use a printer - don't install PLIP initially.
>> I got the message "Drive 0: deviation=-4080" during the install.
>I think you can ignore this: it's probably fdisk setting up a parameter
>to tell it how the drive responds.
>> Eventually I got a menu of installation types, and picked "home" (though
>> really I want "home" + "development").
>Redo this step: don't pick "home" - instead pick "custom" which will allow
>you to pick the individual package bundle selections. Alternatively, skip
>this step: install purely the base system and then install individual
>packages from dselect - this takes much longer but will allow you to select
>individual packages.
>> I started walking through dselect. It wouldn't take a pointer to my CD for
>> the whole package, and made me walk through the locations of the individual
>> parts. I think the problem was that the CD only contained some of the
>> parts (not contrib or non-free, which are on some of the other CDs in the
>> set). I there a way to make dselect happy when installation materials are
>> spread across several CDs?
>Load the first CD: take what you can from it, then load what CheapBytes calls
>"extras". A lot of work has gone into fixing this for the next release: in
>the interim, take the CD's individually.
>>
>> wwwdialup complained it couldn't find a modem (hardware problem, unrelated
>> to Debian). Then I got to the xfree86 install. A very short way through
>> it started to do the config file. I ran into trouble, and said "n" to
>> installing it. At this point it hung.
>Don't run the graphical install (XF86Setup) from that set of CheapBytes
disks.
>Run the command line text based xf86config utility. XF86Setup was broken on
>these disks.
>>
>> When I rebooted the system I found it wasn't too functional; man wouldn't
>> work (it complained it hadn't been configured).
>>
>> The next day I tried starting dselect on my own. It reported lots of items
>> not fully installed. I told it to go ahead, hoping this would complete the
>> install. It seemed to do everything; for example, it installed 3 different
>> window managers! This time it got much further in the xfree86 install,
>> actually bringing up a graphic configuration screen. (It also prompted for
>> install of a whole bunch of servers. even though I would think it could
>> recognize that I have an S3 chip). I couldn't get it to recognize my mouse
>> (a MS mouse using a PS/2 port). So I quit. This lead to the xfree86
>> config module. After failing to get anywhere, I again tried to skip it,
>> and it again hung.
>>
>> The good news was that when I rebooted I had man pages.
>>
>> The other annoyance was that printing did not work, and I got constant
>> messages
>> lp: No printer...
>PLIP has the parallel port and the module needed for lp isn't installed??
>If you can do without PLIP for the interim, do so: use magicfilter for
>a semi-intelligent filter to your printer. If you really need PLIP, then
>for the moment you may need to unload and reload kernel modules manually to
>swap between lp and PLIP. man insmod will give you the gory details of how
>to do this.
>> I know that these notes may not be sufficiently detailed. I'll keep better
>> ones next time! But if there's enough here for anyone to give me a
>> pointer, I'd appreciate it.
>Happy to help: if this helps, mail me back for any further problems.
>
>Andy
>
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