Kushal Kumaran wrote:
A while back I struggled to get Debian installed on the Dell Optiplex I am using right now. It's a P4 2.8 GhZ machine. The issue was not that the Netinst CD wouldn't boot, it was that neither Grub nor Lilo would install to the MBR. RedHat Fedora Core 6 worked without a hitch, but I did not want that distribution. I ended up installing Lilo manually from a GParted CD after mounting the Hard Drive. I was then able to use the Etch Netinst CD to install Debian. Further back in time, I had difficulty installing any number of *nixes on 2 Compaq Proliant P III 200 SMP systems. Debian, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and Ubuntu, among others, failed to get through the whole installation routine without problems. Once again Red Hat Fedora Core 5 installed without any problems. I put it on LVM too! I ran them that way for 2 years before trying Debian again. Once again I had to manually install the bootloader (Grub). I posted to this list recently that I was able to get Grub2 installed on this Dell but once again, I did it manually after booting from a Netinst CD in rescue mode. I know you said it would be nice if you could get a Debian CD to boot. I was just trying to give you some background I've had with legacy, server-class hardware. Some issues I've had with the type of hardware you are describing;On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:29:30 -0900 Siraaj Khandkar <sirconquer@gmail.com> wrote:On 16 Feb 2008, at 05:10, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: <snip>It currently runs Red Hat 7.1, but the trouble is that now that it has been decommissioned for over a year - no one remembers the root password to it anymore :-(If your Dell has a unix-type OS on it, you could use the debootstrap install method from the installation manual.For red hat boxes that old, you can boot them in single user mode without it asking for a password.<snip>
Bad CD media (this has gotten me several times. Cant't recall if you said you tried to burn another CD) Bad ram (Memtest found bad memory on the Proliants even though the installer didn't complain. This stopped the next boot) Improper Bios settings. (the Bios settings are somewhat convoluted on these machines and there might be something in there you need to adjust, especially if you have RAID hardware)
How's your attitude? Bad things can happen if your Chi is out of balance.:)Depending on your comfort level, I would attempt to upgrade the Red Hat installation, get the machine back, (new root password) then try any number of work arounds to get Debian installed if your heart is absolutely set on it.
Michael