Re: installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
Hello Luda,
> So far the agreement between you guys and my other linux-friends seems to
> be that I should pull the hard drive and install on another system. I will
> do that as a last resort, because I will probably have a nightmare of a
> time configuring it on the libretto with all the devices.
I also prefer to do the initial install on the actual target if at
all possible, although in general you can get a running system using
a hard drive from an installation done on another machine.
> So, before I do that, I'd like to explore other options. Digby, you
> said that you installed Debian from SuSE using a hard drive install. What
> did you do? I am trying a hard drive install, but I am failing, as I
> described above. Will the difference be that I do it with loadlin and you
> did it with lilo? Can I get lilo going from dos?
It was quite different, - didn't require lilo or grub to start
the initial install system. The procedure involved copying the installation
system into a sub-directory on the SuSE system, and then chrooting
into it, From there I was able to do a net-install using my PCMCIA ethernet
card. Essentially it was the Debian net-install the SuSE kernel and
drivers, but Debian filesystem and commands.
This was back in January - I think the installation instructions may
have changed since then.. and I have just finished an install on quite
a different laptop, so my memory of what I did on the Libretto is now
a bit hazy :-/
> I have a 4G hard drive. Dos can only see 2 G of it, so I partitioned the
> other 2 G into ext2. I left 8M at the end of the disk for sleep/wake
> cycles (I read somewhere that's where libreto wants them on 4G drives...).
That doesn't sound right. If you partition the disk while it is in the
Libretto, the BIOS knows about about the hibernation area and will
reserve it automatically (it has to be big enough to store your entire
memory - which is potentially 64MB). You only have to worry about
about reserving it yourself if you use a HDD larger than 4GB, or
do the partitioning in another machine.
> I used root=/dev/ram, root=/dev/hda2, root=/dev/hdb2 and many
> other permutations of /dev/hd** with the same result. The only difference
> from trying to mount it in ram, is that for RAM-mount it complains
>
> cramfs: wrong magic
>
> and for /dev/hd** mount that message does not appear.
>
> I have 32 M of RAM, and during RAMDISK driver initialization
> (loadlin-boot method) it allocates 16 RAM disks with 8192 K size, 1024
> blocksize. Is that a little much? Maybe my memory is corrupted somewhere,
> I'll check it out.
I havn't tried loadlin. If you give me the URL corresponding to the
images you downloaded, I'll try them on the Windows partition on
my system to see if they work for me.
> I have pcmcia network cards and internet access though a modem on another
> machine, but I have no faith in being able
> to get pcmcia to work at such early stage of install.
You'll definately need to get the initial install system booted first
before you have any chance to use the network card.
> I could install
> windows95 from hard drive, install pcmcia ethernet card, and try to do a
> network install from my linux desktop at home. But, I have no idea how to
> configure things on the desktop to do that. Besides, I would only be able
> to do that if I could boot from hard drive, which I can't! I don't want to
> install over a modem from debian websites, because I do not trust security
> of my isp.
In that case a netinstall is probably not very practical. If your desktop
machine has a CD or DVD, you would probably be better off just using the
network to do a remote CD/DVD based install.
> >If all else fails, I could probably get you a bootable Linux partition
> >image which we would just need to get coppied into a partition on
> >your hard drive.
>
> How would that work?
If you create a partition of corresponding size, then you would just
need to copy the image into it. I'm not a Windows person, so I don't
know the easiest way to do it from windows. I would probably download
a hosted inferno system (Inferno is an operating system that can run
on top of windows, and gives you access to Unix style commands like
dd), but it might be a bit of a diversion if you are not familiar with
it. You could also try booting from a linux rescue floppy, mount the
DOS partition, and use 'dd' to write the image to the linux partition.
Then use lilo on the floppy to boot to it, and if that works install
lilo or grub onto your HDD MBR.
Regards,
DigbyT
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt(at)digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com
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