Re: netinstall basically, well, F****D up.
.
> There's quite a lot involved in what you did I'm not knowledgeable
> about, and you didn't mention why you attempted to do it this way, so
> perhaps I'll be speaking past you, but...
>
> You bypassed most of the install logic for Debian. If you did a similar
> thing attempting to change between other distros, you'd be bypassing the
I use the available options, thats *NOT* breaking logic,
> installer logic for that distro as well. Download boot floppies, or the
> first CD and do the install from them.
>
> Is your personal data in a separate partition, that is, is /home it's
> own partition?
Seperate data is in the windows partition, which I can't raise the courage
to nuke yet, purely for prosperity.
>
> What else are you attempting to preserve in (what turns out to be) an
> upgrade? Knowing that, someone may be able to offer advice about how to
> do that.
>
> If it's only your email and personal files, I recommend backing them up
> and letting Debian [SuSE | Mandrake | RedHat | Gentoo | etc. ] go
> through it's designed install process. None of the distros handles
> everything the same way. That's why they forked.
>
> After the system is up, then you can import your mail and files again,
> and deal with any UID/permissions issues separately.
>
> I'd elect to initialize all standard filesystems (/, /opt, /var, swap)
> except /home. If you can back up /home and you want to change it's file
> system type (say ext2 to ext3 or whatever) then I'd initialize it too,
> but otherwise I keep it intact in upgrade/distro changes.
>
> But keep in mind there are many settings kept in .whatever_conf files in
> /home/<user_name> that affect how things work, so you might be best
> getting them out of the way. The settings for Mandrake may not be right
> for Debian. If nothing else, many parts are put in different places
> (proprietary choices again). You can copy /home elsewhere, or move all
> of /home to /home/old_home (and make sure nothing's left behind in /home
> itself except for old_home) before starting the install.
>
> I'm running a personal laptop, and I have /, swap, /home, and two
> Window$ partitions: /windows/c and /windows/d. During the Debian
> install, there's an *alternate* choice, after mounting and initializing
> /, to mount any existing partitions. That's where I specify my /home
> and /windows/... partitions. Alternate means it doesn't come up during
> the normal progression - you have to go and look for it. Right after
> mounting / is the right time to do this.
I'm using HDA5 for Debian, I can give it another partition if necesary later.
I have 14 to choose from.
> LILO and Grub have no problem with 1024 cylinder limits now (AFAIK), so
> there's no real need to keep a /boot down low on the HD. If you're
I wonder, are you copying this from a FAQ?
They only have problems if you use old IDE drive BIOSES that can
only detect the first gig with INT13H
> running a mailserver or such, there are reasons to make other choices,
> but if you're running a mailserver or such, you've probably read about
> that.
>
> If you've got something else you're trying to preserve, like an Oracle
> install or such, let us know so someone can mention how to handle that.
>
> Part of the reason I ultimately chose Debian is that advice in How-tos
> and on the web didn't seem to work with other distros, because they make
> proprietary choices - files are named differently, located somewhere
> else, boot scripts are different. Debian seems the most "standard" of
> the well-supported distro projects.
Nah the most standard is Red Hat, however it is absolute shite.
>
> That means there are big differences between all the distros, and I
> think it's unreasonable to expect the pieces from one distro to all work
> with another. Let the installer do it's job.
I did I followed the instructions at
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-install-methods#s-create-floppy
for a debian hard disk netinstall (note it's section 4.4)
floppy installs are notoriously unreliable, and, well, cd/dvd technology
is older then the networking broadband technology im using.
As for doing something different, loading modules inside the installer to
"shim" temporary net access is common practice.
I've got a good Debian install, it just can't access the 'net
because DHCLIENT is far too old, and so is the 2.2 kernel series.
Im used to using DHCPCD with 2.4 kernels/distros.
If I can get DHCLIENT configured, I can get my broadband
connection going and do a upgrade via apt to unstable,
whatever thats called these days.
Sid or Sarge?
Im not pissed at you for saying it though ;-)
nobodys perfect.
===
Lars.
--
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