I value your time :) - Re: Other avenues to get help
Hello again,
1) Thank you to all who replied both on the list and off list :) See
number 4) at the bottom for specific replies.
2) I am glad that nobody took my post as a troll :) It was not
intended that way. I truly appreciate the people who spend time
answering question to so many users on this list.
3) I value your time. I really do :) As a proof, I can tell you the
following story (which you don't need to read if you are short of
time ;) ).
Recently I installed Debian on my secondary, older computer. It didn't
go without a hitch. Actually, whatever I tried, I ran into troubles.
I tried installing in different modes, and the system would hang up at
different stages... but I could never complete the install. I didn't
want to waste people's time, so each time I was tempted to post to
this list asking for help, I remembered another think that I could
check on my own, or something else that I could search on the
internet, to see if someone had the same symptoms.
At one stage, I even spent some time searching the internet to figure
out how to calculate the md5 hash key of the *burned* CD, to make
sure it was identical to the original iso (It was).
After really many hours, I was getting crazy and I wanted to give up
trying on my own, without your help. But, as previously, I thought
about one more thing I could check on my own before bothering you. As
luck would have it, I remembered that years before, I had burned a
memtest boot CD. I booted the computer with it, and quickly found
that one of my two memory sticks was terribly faulty (the computer
had been serviced 2 weeks earlier, and the memory stick had probably
either been damaged or improperly re-inserted into its slot). I
removed the offending stick, and tried again... this time the
installation went without a hitch :)
I spent the whole day, reusing and recycling every bit of knowledge I
could gather from the documents and from the internet, trying alone
for a whole day to solve my problem rather than spending any more of
your time that is precious to me.
So, if today I come to you with this new hardware problem, it's
because I have RTFM'ed and searched for a long time without finding a
solution. This problem (I think it's been the same cause all along)
has been recurring on this computers for years, and by now, I really
need help to get to the end of it. If something is broken, I need to
know what so that I can replace it. If I have a special chipset, I
need to figure out which one. etc.
4) Thanks for your replies.
I will study all the avenues you offer, do more homework on my own,
and come back to you with more precise questions.
Ron: I am not sure there is a single LUG in the whole country where I
live. I have been subscribed for years to all the country/language
specific mailing lists I found but there is no traffic on them. But
I'll check some more. :)
Douglas: I had a look at the installation manual, but I'll make sure
to read all of it. I'll check debian-boot and do a report. Text mode
and CLI is fine with me :) I'll try again to see if I can glean some
more info.
Raj: I had checked the debug message in the F4 window, and searched
the web with the information printed there. Others had experienced
the same problems, but I have not found a solution that was valid in
my case. I'll study the man pages and other docs to see what 'ps'
does, what information I can glean from it and I'll come back to this
list when I have this information. Thanks.
With your help, I have more things to check and I'll do my bit and
study what I need to in the next few days.
Blessings,
--
Augustin
http://minguo.info/ better election methods
http://minguo.info/usa/ the USA FA/DP
Free Association with Delegable Proxy: an internet experiment in
democracy.
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