rescue recovery
I finally got 90% of my notebook back up and running.
Someone else mentioned they were in the same spot.
Here's what I've managed to do so far:
First, no I did not make a backup kernel.
No I did not RTFM some critical 'M'
No I did not pay any attention to all the questions being asked of me
during the install and royally hosed it up. I should be spanked for the
errors I have made.
That said...
I got another PC with Debian on it.
Copied the kernel tree into a new directory so I could do all kinds of
damage there without breaking that PC's kernel source configuration.
In the copied directory (/usr/src/notebook) I did "make menuconfig" and
set up the kernel the way I hoped would work on my notebook.
These are essentially the commands:
cd /usr/src/notebook
make menuconfig
make clean
make dep
make bzImage
cat arch/i386/boot/bzImage > ./vmlinuz
mkboot -r /dev/hda5 /usr/src/notebook/vmlinuz
NOTE:
/dev/hda5 is the location of root on my notebook PC (The broken one)
/usr/src/notebook is the location of the kernel (2.4.9) tree that I was
working in for the notebook.
RTM on mkboot - it can save your butt.
I ended up making a shell script to do all of this because I have to
remove all the modules since they were fuggered up on the notebook as well.
I was able to get a basic kernel working from a floppy and boot from
that floppy onto the notebook.
From there I was able to reconfigure (make menuconfig) the kernel and
install it correctly from that poing and reboot the notebook without the
boot floppy in place.
That's where I am today -- but I have a lot of problems with my pcmcia
drivers -- they have many unresolved symbols and I'm not sure why. It's
too late in the evening for me to mess with it any more -- I'll screw it
up again and have to start over. I'll try in the morning.
If anyone has some suggestions on what to do with the unresolved symbols
in the pcmcia packages I would appreciate it. I think what I need right
now are diagnostic tips on how to really identify the problem and the why.
Thanks to everyone for their answers/suggestions/support. I was able to
save an aweful lot of time!!!
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