Newbie's experience Installing Debian
OK, so after 5 years of playing with slackware and Red Hat, I decide that my
next OS will be Debian --- I've seen the web page, and like the philosophy
and want to get started. The usenet reports that Debian is so difficult to
install can't all be true can they? Unfortunately I've found they are.
Not knowing much about Debian I look on the web site for advice. I find
this:
`It is recommended that first time installers buy the CD set as the
installation is more straightforward. Many of the vendors sell the
distribution for less than US$5 plus shipping (check their web page to see
if they ship internationally). '
Fine I think US$5 == AUD8 plus let's say $10 for postage, I should be able
to get going for $18. Well I don't want to wait weeks for a shipment from
the US, so I phone my local software shop and ask them if they stock Debian
2.1 . Yes, they have a 2 CD set for $25. Great says I . I don't really
mind paying an extra $7. The shop's got to make an honest profit, and I
don't have to wait. So I take home the 2 CDs, and one by one I put them in
my machine, and switch on. neither CD will boot. So I mount the CD and
take a look at them. After a while I figure that I've bought the source
CDs not the binarys. I have a look at the front and sure enough in tiny
writing I see that it does include the word `source'. Damn I say. Perhaps
it was my fault. I shouldn't have rushed in. Perhaps I need to be a
little more patient. I should have read up about it first.
I take another look at the Debian Web Site. I see that the words `Official'
are reserved for the set that the Debian team produce so I decide that I
ought to be getting these. I phone around my home town, but no-one has a
set of Debian CDs with the word `official' on the cover. Indeed the guy on
the phone seems to think I'm a bit wierd for insisting on this. After about
an hour of acute embarrassement I give up and have another look at the
Debian web site.
There's a list of recommened books which come with CDs. That's what I
really need thinks I. So I phone around the technical bookshops and low and
behold one of them has a product that I think will get me going:
Debian GNU/Linux: Guide to Installation and Usage
Author: John Goerzen and Ossama Othman
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
CD Included: one CD
It's recommended on the web site and the title encourages me to think that
it should be easy to use. So, for $40 I buy this book. Take it home, read
through the first couple of chapters and am much more confident. I bung the
disk into the drive, and switch on. Hooray! it boots. A kernel runs and a
pretty menu of options appears. So, I step thought setting the colour,
selecting a keyboard, partitioning the disk . I set up a filesystem and
swap file everything appears to be fine. Then I come to the Install bit.
I choose to install off the CD (seems sensible to me). I see the following
message:
"Choose Debian archive path. Please choose the path inside the CD-ROM where
the Debian archive resides"
and the default appears to be /debian. I choose the default, not having any
other information. Then comes:
"Pleae select the directory containing the file resc1440tecra.bin"
This stumps me. How the hell should I know where that is? Being a
resourcefull character I back out of the menu wait until the CD is
unmounted, and place it in another machine and search for this file. It's
located at /debian/boot So back into the install procedure I go, enter
/debian/boot at the appropriate place. It seems to be denying the
existence of this file. --- but wait it's actually wanting the location of a
file with a similar name "drv1440tecra.bin".
I don't know where that is? I see there is an option `list' which
automatically detects it so I try that. Apparently it's not there. Back to
my other machine, and do a "find" . Sure enough it's not there. What do I
do now? I press <F1> like the start up screen told me. nothing happens. I
turn to the book. No hints. I spend the next 2 hours rebooting and trying
every possible path though the menu. including mounting the CD manually and
pointing the install process to the archives. It still wants this
non-existent file.
It's time to conclude that perhaps my hardware has some funny configuration
which this CD doesn't support. So, I borrow a machine and try again. Exactly
the same symptoms.
So after 2 days and $65 I have not managed to get even a login prompt. For
that price I could have got RedHat 6.1.
It's quite a demoralising experience. Are these problems common in Debian
installation or is it just me ??
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