Re: Newbie's experience Installing Debian
John,
Your disk is bad. All disks are bad that came with the first edition
of the book! New Riders feels badly about this...
Go to www.newriders.com. The home page tells you how to get your
free upgrade.
Next time go to www.Cheapbytes.com.
On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Darrington, John wrote:
>
> 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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