Debian partitions

[John (EBo) David]

Victor Odhner wrote:
> 
> > ahhh... wait.  You mean you you have not written the basic OS to the
> > harddrive (ie there is no file system on the disk yet)?
> 
> All my hard disk partitions are mounted, as follows:
>  dev/ type     Mounted    MB   #Blocks
>  hda1 Primary  /boot    8.23   1281 used, 6065 free.
>  hda2 Primary  /      123.38   2175 used, 907 free.
>  hda3 Primary  /usr  1200.90
>  hda4 Extended
>  hda5 Logical  /swap   65.81
>  hda6 Logical  /home 2319.53
>  hda7 Logical  /tmp   148.06
>  hda8 Logical  /var   501.75
>  hda9 Logical  /work 2130.35

Ok... that looks fine.

> > ... I assume that you were installing it and it died
> > in the "make bootable" section which is one of the very last...
> 
> Right.  I've failed in the DHCP network setup, and
> don't know how to find out what IP address I should
> assign for my network cards, but network setup is the
> only step I've skipped over.

that should not matter if I am following correctly.  You sould be able
to boot from your own machine and fix the network later.  The only time
that this should cause those kinds of problems (or at least I can
imagine) is when you are booting diskless or are cross mouning
partitions like /usr...  Debuging that on a cluster of Sun's caused me
to put on a few grey hairs...

> I've set up network drivers, and there is some config
> set up in the /etc directory.  The /boot partition
> (mounted under /target at this stage of install)
> contains a kernel:
>    vmlinuz-2.2.19pre17  1,001,473 bytes
> ...
>    which I suspect is a copy of the file "linux" which
>    is on my initial rescue disk with the same size.

that is quite old.  I would go with a newer one, but as you say that is
what is on the rescue.

> > ... run lilo with the load config_file option "-C" and
> > force it to write to the boot record.
> 
> I can't run lilo; it says this:
>  "... the base system must be installed to be
>   able to run lilo."

but isn;t the base system aready installed?  I'm missing something
here...  The only insight I have beyond this is that your machine is
running a newer kernal (probably a 2.4.X) and the 2.2.17 does not
recognize it... but that is only a SWAG.

> But I thought the base system could be loaded over the
> network, to avoid loading base from floppies.

colour me befuddled, but I am at a loss...

> Thanks for your patience.

no problem, sorry I cannot be of more help...

 EBo --