[H-GEN] Debian install floppy boot problem

[Greg Black]

On 2003-04-21, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 04:36:10PM +1000, Greg Black wrote:
> > I have been attempting to install Debian on my laptop from the
> > CD[1] that was distributed by AUUG late last year.
> 
> *sigh*
> 
> > I made a
> > floppy from "rescue.bin" and booted the system from it.  I read
> > all the help screens attached to the various function keys and
> > then tried various incantations to start the install process.
> 
> Did you try each of the different kernels that should be
> available? (idepci, bf2.4, vanilla and safe iirc)

Not in the beginning ...

> If you can boot from the
> CD, you should be able to just type each of those in; if you can't, you'll
> have to hunt for floppy images under dists/woody/main/disks-i386/current/
> that're the right size and in directories matching those names ("vanilla"
> is the one that's just in ".", iirc). bf2.4 and safe ought to be the
> likely candidates.

I can't boot from CD because the DVD drive in my laptop died,
hence the attempts to boot from floppy.

I've now tried the bf2.4 floppy and it got through the boot,
wrecked the display[1] and asked for the 2nd floppy.  I then
completed the install over NFS from the CD mounted elsewhere and
it invited me to reboot, which I did.  That, however, froze at
some point that was difficult to determine because of [1].

However, since this attempt did get a long way further into a
successful install than the first several attempts, I'll try
again tomorrow with all available floppy images.  And I'll just
settle for the most basic install in an attempt to get something
that will at least let me interact with a running system for
long enough to see if it will talk to my wireless card (which is
the point of this exercise).

Greg

[1] I don't know why people write installers that want to be
    clever with the display.  Plain text installers are easy to
    use and don't leave you in the middle of a dialogue about
    partitioning the disk where the important information is not
    visible -- that makes for scary stuff when installing onto a
    disk that holds two other OS installations that should not
    be disturbed.

    The actual nature of the faulty display was that, throughout
    the installation, the bottom four lines disappeared off the
    bottom of the screen; one and a half of those lines appeared
    up at the top in a weird, compressed and largely unreadable
    form.

-- 
Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net> <http://www.gbch.net/gjb.html>
GPG signed mail preferred; further information in headers.
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