Re: installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
Hi Liudmila,
I have Debian (amoungst other things) running on a Libretto 110CT.
It is a nice little machine once you get it installed, but as you
have discovered, one of the more challenging install targets...
The PCMCIA floppy is of limitted use for installation, because
it is PCMCIA and only the BIOS knows how to read it. Once you
have booted, if a second or more floppies are required by the
installer (as is often the case to load extra modules), you are
stuck.
The 800x480 screen was hard to get going other than at 640x480
originally, but I think the X server on Sarge worked ok out of
the box.
The way I got my system installed (which probably won't help you
directly) was..
1. Red Hat Install - could not use any PCMCIA device (floppy, CD,
ethernet) due to modules needed from a second floppy, so configured
a desktop machine as a CD server and used a laplink cable and PLIP.
2. Replaced RedHat with SuSE, bootstrapping from the RedHad installation.
3. Installed Debian Sarge using had disk install from SuSE.
I have since installed on a number of Libretto's by 'cheating' and
just installing the hard drive in a desktop machine using a 2.5"
cable adapter, and dd'ing a copy of my current system onto the
partition.
I have also upgraded the hard drive several times, and am now
at 100GB. Be careful not to create any partitions that overlap
with the hibernation area on the disk. If your disk is larger
than 4GB it will be in the middle of the disk somewhere. (Cylinder
1018-1042 on mine).
The hard disk install from Windows that you are trying is probably
the easiest option for you. I havn't tried it myself, especially
with such an old version of Windows (my Libretto came with W95
installed).
The diagnostic seems to indicate a problem mounting your ramdisk,
so I would check the integrity of the image and the arguments to
loadlin.
If nobody more familiar with Windows offers any insights there, I
could give it a go on my machine and see if it boots from my W95
partition.
Also, you didn't mention how large you hard disk is, and what you
have in the way of network connectivity. Those items will probably
effect the choice of install strategy.
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.
Regards,
DigbyT
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 09:40:39PM -0500, Liudmila Yafremava wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> I have been trying to install Sarge on Toshiba Libretto 110ct
> for weeks with no success. I gravely need someone to take me
> through it, as I feel that I've tried everything and can't
> think of anything else to do.
>
> The laptop had an empty hard drive and external PCMCIA
> floppy and cd drives. It cannot boot from cd drive, only
> from floppy or hard drive. I installed dos on it and
> formatted the hard drive. At first, I tried to do an install
> using only floppies. I made attempts to install both potato
> and sarge that way, with the same result: after booting with a
> linux boot floppy, the machine demands a root floppy but
> never releases the floppy drive (it continues to spin). When,
> ignoring that, I pull the boot floppy and replace it with the
> root floppy, it responds with a bunch of queer messages and
> "unable to mount root floppy" etc. Somewhere I read that
> initial linux boot floppy does not have the pcmcia drivers
> on it, so the machine may not be able to communicate with
> its floppy in such an install. Correct me if I am wrong.
>
> So, after a lot of messing around I installed windows 3.1
> and pcmcia cdrom drivers for dos which allowed me to copy
> the whole debian disk 1 onto the harddrive. I followed the
> instructions in the installation manual for a hard drive
> install. I copied loadlin, vmlinuz, initrd.gz and the .iso
> file for the 1st of the sarge install cds onto c:\ and
> tried installing linux by invoking
>
> loadlin c:\vmlinuz root=/dev/ram rw initrd=c:\initrd.gz.
>
> This results in scanning of vmlinuz and initrd, with a bunch
> of boot messages and finally
>
> cramfs: wrong magic
> kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:00.
>
> I tried changing the root= parameter, I downloaded
> vmlinuz and initrd.gs from sarge's hd-media subfolder,
> but all that results in kernel panic and inability to mount
> root fs. I copied root.img onto c:\ with no results.
>
> I tried using sbm to tell the laptop to boot from the cd,
> but sbm cannot see the device. I guess it is not an ide.
>
> I know I am pretty clueless when it comes to linux, but
> I have installed debian on a few machines before, and I am
> able to follow the instructions.. What am I missing? I am
> stumped. Please help.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Luda
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact
> listmaster@lists.debian.org
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt(at)digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com
Reply to: