on Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 07:20:38PM -0400, Ashley Graham (ph33rful@optonline.net) wrote:
> hello friends,
>
> i am trying to get a debian system on an old laptop i have copped from
> a friend; it is rather old, but i couldn't give up the chance to
> install linux on something else.
Since online information about this system is difficult to find (all
I've found in a few minutes are battery and memory sources), how about
your describing the CPU, memory, and HD configuration of this system?
> i have tried the regular debian floppy installation, but it fails
> while loading the ramdisk (no kernel panic, it simply stops). i tried
> the regular kernel, the compact, and the bf24.
This is a situation in which I'd recommend a chroot install.
Your system is likely bootable with Tom's Root Boot, a
GNU/Linux-on-floppy distribution running in RAMdisk, which gives the
benefit of both leaving your floppy drive free for use, and leaves a
number of additional ramdisks free for your use.
If you have or can buy a PCMCIA network card (given that this is an
older system, I'd recommend you verify that it can handle 32-bit PCMCIA,
and suspect it takes only 16 bit), you can bootstrap your installation
over a LAN fairly readily. If this isn't possible, you may have luck
with SLIP or PLIP, though I've found both to be slow, tempermental, and
not altogether error free (see my recent posts to this list regarding a
ThinkPad 750C).
The basic method for a chroot install is:
- Boot Tom's Root Boot.
- Partition the system as desired. For a small disk (say 250MB - 1
GiB) I'd stick with root, swap, /tmp, and /usr.
- Transfer a Potato base filesystem image to the system via LAN,
floppy, PLIP, or SLIP.
- Untar the image onto the filesystem, and chroot into it.
- Complete the base installation.
- Install and configure a kernel.
- Boot the new system, edit /etc/apt/soures.list, and install
additional packages.
Detailed instructions are at:
http://twiki.debian.org/Main/DebianChrootInstall
> in case you were wondering, i am planning on turing it into an easily
> portable demo for friends, and a simple workstation for myself,
> something easy to carry around notes, jot down ideas, simple stuff -
> nothing to grand.
Note that from what I've found (24 MiB RAM, 486), this will make a
decent console-based system, but little else. Not sure how easily
impressed your friends are... Should work for light editing, mail,
remote access via SSH.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Defeat EU Software Patents! http://swpat.ffii.org/
Attachment:
pgp0olw0m_vNz.pgp
Description: PGP signature