Debian install problems

[Robert A. Klahn]

Eric:

I think your problems might be more hardware than software. I think your IDE hard drive, or perhaps the CDROM drive, is suspect.

The first thing I would do is boot off the rescue floppy and see if I can read the hard disk and CD-ROM without issue.

1) boot off the rescue floppy and get to a root shell prompt.....
2) Read the entire hard disk (this will take quite a while, depending upon the size of the drive):
     dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null bs=64k
3) dd will either read the entire hard disk without issue, or will barf with an I/O error.
4) do the same for the CD-ROM drive. Put in a cd, DONT MOUNT IT, and repeat number 2, just with "if=/dev/hdc", or hdb, or whereever your drive is.

Its also possible that your floppy set is bad. Floppys are notoriously poor media. You may want to try recreating them.

I also think there is a BIOS upgrade to permit booting off the CDROM drive. This would be your best choice, if possible, as CDROM is much more reliable.

Bob.

On Thu, 14 Feb 2002 15:25:10 -0700
Eric Richardson <eric.richardson@milagrosoft.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm having a lot of problems with a debian 2.2 install. First, the 
> hardware is a cyrix 686 with an intel mainboard and an ide hard drive 
> and a CD rom. I installed Debian a couple of times and was attempting to 
> get the network running and things went weird.
> 
> All of a sudden after running a couple of hours the permissions of 
> things started to go weird. On boot, unix.o couldn't create file and 
> reported the filesystem was read only. Later when I was trying to 
> apt-get install isapnptools the apt-get executable had no execute 
> permissions, something like S--------. Other programs would not execute 
> either and I was forced to shutoff the power as I couldn't shutdown or 
> do anything. I had used the disk 1 successfully previously to install 
> dhcpcd which removed pump.
> 
> Next I booted with the recover floppy but when it mounted the / 
> partition and tried to boot but the kernel panic'ed with a checksum or 
> something. At this point I probably should have run fs2chk or something 
> but chose to reinstall.
> 
> The reinstall seemed to go fine until I reached the point of the base 
> system install and the system won't untar the base_2.2gz. This is a 
> floppy install for the kernel as the BIOS doesn't have the CD boot 
> support. I used the boot and root floppies but then try to install the 
> rest of the system off the CD. The CD seems to work fine but as said 
> before has problems on the untarring the base2_2.gz. I searched the /var 
> dir but could find an installer.log or something and nothing in messages 
> that helps. Because of the previous filesystem corruption? I suspected 
> the hard disk but there could be other problems. The install disks are 
> the cheapbytes silver non-cdr disks and I have used them for other 
> installs and loading 2.2 software so I don't suspect them but perhaps 
> tthey are bad or the CD? I really don't have a clue other than something 
> very non normal is going on. Can I get a complete functioning bootable 
> system out of only the floppies or do I need the base portion off the 
> CD. I don't have a CD burner so I have to get install disks elsewhere.
> 
> Any help, ideas, etc. welcome.
> 
> Eric
> 
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-- 
Robert A. Klahn
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"Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger and Courage. Anger at the way
things are, and Courage to struggle to create things as they should be." -
St. Augustine