On Sun, 2003-07-06 at 05:47, jianan wrote:
> Hi,
> I went through the procedures in the document "Installing Debian
> GNU/Linux 3.0 for Intel X86".
>
> 1. Following the download from the specified sites i.e. 'current', I
> end up with a version 2.2. This is not really a problem compared to
> what follows.
Try downloading the the debian.org sites. Check that the filename refers
specifically to 3.0.
> 2. I was able to proceed smoothly like partition the drive into /boot,
> /, /usr and swap; make the system bootable by copying the MBR into
> /boot; all the way until a boot floppy was generated. I then re-boot
> into Linux from this floppy. At the end of the boot messages there was
> a line which I remembered vaguely warning that the MBR record size was
> bigger than my whole drive. Some numbers were displayed for the sizes
> which I can't recall exactly. But it booted up alright. The '#' prompt
> appeared. So I did a "cd /" followed by "ls". The sub-directories were
> displayed OK. Then disaster struck. There was a message about "IDE0
> interrupt...". I heard knocking sound from the harddisk drive. Then
> smell of something burning. I powered down the system. The harddisk,
> some surface-mounted discrete components on the PCB, to be precise,
> were burnt out.
Was the hard disk IBM by any chance. IBM hard drives are renowned for
their click of death. Nothing to do with Linux. I think it might have
been co-incidence that the harddrive burnt out same time you installed
linux but I am not a hardware expert.
> 3. What is the reason? Is there a bug? After having found the MBR to
> be bigger that the drive size, shouldn't the boot be aborted?
Dont know. How old is your machine and how big was your hard drive. The
problem might have something to do with older bioses not being able to
handle hard drives bigger thatn 8G,
> I have not lost faith in Debian or Linux. In fact I want to get a new
> drive and try out 3.0. But it would be interesting to know what really
> happens. The HD should not be a suspect. This is my slave drive which
> I only used to backup important info from the C drive which is
> definitely more heavily used.
I am glad to hear that you have not lost faith in Linux. After all, what
do millions of people put up with everyday to work with Windows. I cant
remember the last time I had to reboot my machine because something
didnt work right or I just Installed something.
The only other thing that I can think of is that Windows doesnt take any
hardware even close to its limit and especially if the drive was under
used before, any faults that it might have had would not have been
discovered earlier. These are are just my thoughts. I hope that someone
with more experience in this will be able to enlighten you further.
Hope this helps,
Shri
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shri Shrikumar U R Byte Solutions Tel: 0845 644 4745
I.T. Consultant Edinburgh, Scotland Mob: 0773 980 3499
Web: www.urbyte.com Email: shri@urbyte.com
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