Re: My (hamm) installation tale (long)
Quoting Richard Losey (rlosey@metronet.com):
> I had a 1.6G drive and a 4.3G drive in that computer. The 1.6G is the
> original disk and the 4.3G was an add-on. I decided to reserve 500M on the
> 1.6G for Windows and use the rest for Linux.
>
> First problem: The boot.bat script was not in the documented place. This
> was no big deal, but cast doubts on the professionalism of the CDs. It is
> documented to be in INSTALL, but it was in BOOT (or vice versa).
Perhaps people reporting the bug couldn't remember which way round it
was, was meant to be, or vice versa...
> Second problem: The boot loader could not see the 4.3G drive. I suspect
> this is due to the drive layout.... the 1.6G is the PRIMARY controller on
> the FIRST IDE. The CD-ROM is the PRIMARY controller on the SECOND IDE.
> The 4.3G is the SECONDARY on the SECOND IDE. This was unfortunate because
> I had wanted the swap space on the 4.3G. After several false starts, I
> finally got around this problem by doing some of the install and then
> switching to a second window and manually adding the partitions on the
> second disk. I also had to copy files to the correct partition, but it
> eventually all seemed to work. I'm not saying that this is a Debian
> install problem, but I do think it would be good to point out that this
> kind of setup (which really cannot be all that unusual) will have troubles.
I'm not sure what partitioning you have, but you can avoid all these
problems by using loadlin to boot from dos until you have the
confidence to manage multiple-OS booting.
> Third problem: X will not install because a file is missing from the
> distribution (Xsession). This is VERY VERY bad. The first time I
> installed, I just ignored the error, but it was frustrating to not have the
> capability to run X. The second time I did the install, I looked around
> the hard drives and found a file like Xsession.debian (or something like
> that). I copied it to Xsession and then I was able to install X. I also
> tried to enable xdm, but this was a disastrous mistake -- the system went
> into some kind of infinite loop that I couldn't break out of. I had to
> start the install again from scratch, which is in itself annoying because
> of the need to stop it part-way through and correct the other disks.
This is another area which is best avoided until you have more
experience with X. There's no need to use anything more than
startx to run X. (I'm surprised Xsession was missing; the xbase.deb
just didn't contain it?)
In particular, it helps to know (a) what turns xdm on (/etc/X11/config
having start-xdm) and (b) how to boot to single mode, if necessary
with the rescue disk, to effect the change.
> Fourth problem: some packages fail to install -- in particular, emacs20 and
> a couple of others -- they try to "byte-compile" them (whatever that
> means), but the make is unsuccessful There are three packages in this
> category. This problem is not fixed, and I'm not sure what to do. My
> systems seems to work OK without these (and I don't use emacs anyway);
> however, it bothers me that a "stable" package would have these problems.
I think the problem may be that you have the package "tm" selected.
This seemed to cause problems and was best deselected, whereupon
the other packages install ok. It's certainly not obvious from the
error message; what is it, something about line 28?
> Fifth problem: After the binaries were installed, I wanted to install the
> source and the contrib packages. I spent several days trying to figure out
> how to do this, with no success. This is a TERRIBLE problem (like #3).
> There is NO instructions on how to do this. The help on the debian site
> basically says "do the install" and that's it. When I tried to run
> 'dselect' on the contrib disk, it wouldn't run without accessing some files
> on the main binary CD as well. Because I had the disk space, I finally
> copied both the contrib CD and the binary CD to one of my hard drives and
> ran the install from the hard drive. This seems like a terrible solution,
> since not everyone is going to have enough free space to be able to do
> this.
I think multi-CD selection has arrived, but not in hamm, or even slink
as released. I would have thought the best way round is to copy the
.debs you want from the contrib CD to anywhere, attempt to install
them with dpkg -i debfilenames and then install the packages it
complains about with dselect. Then rerun dpkg.
> Note that it also does not fix the problem with installing the
> source.
I'm not sure why you need to install any sources, except for the
kernel which comes in the binary distribution (kernel-source...)
for that reason. Oh, and pine because of its licence. They may
be obliged to give you the source CD as part of linux's licence -
I don't know, not using CDs myself.
> I saw some reference to dpkg-source, but that program/script does
> not exist on my system. I finally saw in this group talk about a web site
> with the source, so I went there, downloaded it, and installed it into
> /usr/src.
dpkg-dev should contain dpkg-source, and is normally automatically
selected for installation at an early stage (priority standard).
> Due to my troubles, my friends are thinking of avoiding Debian completely.
That's a shame, but will give an interesting comparison.
> I hope some expert will be able to offer some help in these areas.
No expert, sorry...
Cheers and good luck,
--
Email: d.wright@open.ac.uk Tel: +44 1908 653 739 Fax: +44 1908 655 151
Snail: David Wright, Earth Science Dept., Milton Keynes, England, MK7 6AA
Disclaimer: These addresses are only for reaching me, and do not signify
official stationery. Views expressed here are either my own or plagiarised.
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