Booting a full Debian system from floppy or CD
I have a newly-installed debian woody system that is working fine except
that I can't get it to boot from the HD. I'm not worried about this - I
can boot from CD1 and type
rescue boot=/dev/hda5
and it boots and runs fine. /dev/hda1 is /boot, and /dev/hda5 is /. I haven't
had a chance to go through the BIOS and the various Linux and LILO docs to
see why I can't get it to boot (after POST, I get a flashing cursor in the
top left and have to cold-start the system). But I'm not worried about this
- I'll figure it out and I'm happy to boot from CD or floppy for the time
being.
That said, I need a 2.4.18-686 kernel, so I apt-get installed kernel-image-2.4.18-686.
This ran fine. But I can't get this new kernel to boot. I boot from the
install CD, type rescue root=/dev/hda5, and the 2.2.20-compact kernel loads, eventhough
the vmlinuz symlink points to boot/vmlinuz-2.4.16-686.
All the necessary files for both kernels are in /boot on /dev/hda1. The
install of kernel-image 2.4.18 installed the initrd directory and created
the symlink in / of initrd.img that points to /boot/initrd.img-2.4.18-686.
So, my questions are:
1. If I'm going to boot from floppy or CD for the next few days, what is
the preferred method? Boot and then type rescue . . ..
2. How do I get the 2.4.18-686 kernel to boot?
For those that are interested, I have found myself in the midst of several
different Linux implementations, working on things that I have done before
in the SlowLaris and MicroSloth environments. The kicker is that these projects
are forcing me to learn things about Linux and Debian that I had hoped to
avoid for a little while, such as compiling and patching the kernel, dealing
with modules, and dealing with Bootloader quirks . . . what I've got going is:
Replace a completely ignored W2K/MS-ISA/MS-PPTP "firewall" with a similarly
ignored Debian box. Gotta patch the kernel with mppe to get pptp to work,
and patch ppp to get the authentication for MS to work. They'd like to do
some anti-SPAM on the mail-relay on this box as well . . .
Replace a similarly completely ignored W2K/MS-ISA "firewall" with a similarly
ignored Debian box. They want to see it working first, so I have to get
one of my "extra" machines working. This is the one above that is balking
at booting from the HD. Right now, it's more important to get Shorewall
installed and working than getting it to boot from the HD . . .
Get an asterisk PBX setup . . . . I'll need to complile the zaptel drivers
for this, and load them as a module, or compile them into the kernel . .
.
So much fun and so little time.
Hopefully at the end of this, I'll have learned enough to be a meaningful
contributor to this community, and repay the kindness and generosity that
so many of you have already shown!!
TIA
madmac
Doug MacFarlane
madmac@covad.net
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