Re: Rescue disk woe; floppy is OK !?
At 10:04 AM 2/24/1999 -0600, Brendel, Rob wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to install debian's stable linux distribution from floppies on
>> an old 486 machine. But it always stalls at the installation of the
>> kernel. I'm prompted to insert the Rescue disk, but the system doesn't
>> recognize it. I've tried many different disks from different machines,
>> but they all hang the same way at the same point. I can boot from all of
>> them fine to start
>> the installation, but they _all_ hang at the kernel installation step.
>>
>> I create the rescue disk using rawrite2.exe with this command:
>> rawrite2 -f resc1440.bin -d a:
>>
>> This is the 'Rescue Disk', right? From DOS I can list the files created,
>> among them:
>>
>> ldlinux.sys
>> linux
>> root.bin
>> debian.txt
>> syslinux.cfg
>> rdev.sh
>> install.sh
>>
>> Am I doing something wrong here? Is this not the Rescue Disk? If I'm
>> doing this right, any ideas about why I always hang at the same point?
Yes, this is the rescue disk. It sounds like you've tried different
physical floppies, but in case I'm misreading the info above and you're
using the same floppy, try a different one (and then another, and then
another); floppies are notorious for causing problems during a Debian install.
Another option might be to try some of the optional boot images, such as
the Tecra disks. As a general rule, the Tecra images aren't needed on
desktop PCs, but you might give it a try. I'm sure others on this list can
give you more and better suggestions than I have.
>> Here are some questions for down the road, assuming I can get past this
>> problem:
>>
>> My DOS partition is still my boot. How do I switch to Linux from DOS? Do
>> I always have to boot in with the rescue disk?
You can:
1) set up LILO to give you a multi-boot configuration
2) if you have a recent DOS (5? 6.x), you can set up a multi-boot
configuration with the [menu]-type commands in config.sys in conjunction
with loadlin
3) use loadlin to manually start Linux from a DOS prompt
4) use a Linux boot disk; this is the method I'd start with, and then
"graduate" up to one of the other methods.
>> Any suggestions on installing the packages when the only way I can get
>> files onto this thing is on floppies? I'll ftp them onto another machine
>> (WinNT); then do I rawrite2.exe each one onto floppies? Or can I just
>> WinZIP them across several ones, or gz/tar under NT, or what? I'm not
>> sure how I'll proceed here, so I have all these pre-newbie questions. My
>> goal is just to use the machine for lyx, so I guess I'll need Xwindow and
>> lyx, and not much more.
Sorry; I can't speak to this. However, if you'll put a modem in it (even a
slow one), you can ftp the rest of the install to it pretty easily (but
slow means overnight for three or four nights probably, whereas fast means
half a night).
>Is there a resource similar to the install.txt for what to do once Linux is
>up and running, that might answer these types of questions?
>
>> Thanks for any help,
>> Rob Brendel
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