Klaus Imgrund wrote: > -SNIP- <
With the testing CD's it boots fine.Everything works ok there until I try to find my NIC. With every ISO I tried (bout 5) with bf-2.4 it starts to load the kernel.The screen comes up and then I get an error about wrong magic followed by the reiserfs superblocks it can't find.Next step is the kernel panic.I never make it to any installation steps there at all.
Something is wrong with your CDs or procedures then. It sure sounds like it is trying to boot involving the HD, and that shouldn't happen. Have you tried the CDs on another machine? Maybe that isn't possible, though. The only other suggestion is to make the "rescue" and "root" bf2.4 Woody boot floppies and boot from them. Once you get to the start of the install, then you can use the CDs (if they are good) for the install of the base system or go straight to the netinstall.
I did create the reiser partitions with a 2.4.20 kernel but as you said - partitions don't even get mounted where I get stuck. Just to make sure I didn't screw up something with the ISO I burned a gentoo install CD and that boots just fine and finds all the hardware. Real strange!
Are you using the "Boot from CDROM" option in the BIOS, or are you booting from some other method to start the boot process? Care to share your boot proceedures? Maybe there is something there. I have a couple of machines here that just won't boot from the BIOS, and I have to use floppies to get it started, then switch to the CDROMs when asked. What sort of machine is this?? I should have asked that earlier... I am only familiar with i386 and some Dec Alpha methods to get Debian running...
Cheers, -Don Spoon-