Re: debian sucks aka i cant get it to install

From: Erich Waelde (Erich.Waelde_at_t-online.de)
Date: 02/05/04

  • Next message: Erich Waelde: "Re: debian sucks aka i cant get it to install" 
    Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 09:07:03 +0100
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org, debian@merk.caltech.edu

    Hi,

    A _little_more_ detail is definitely needed to help you.

    1. What machine are you using?
       desktop/laptop ...
       Processor/how much memory?
       ide/scsi/sata disk ... ?

    2. Is another Linux distro working on this system?

    3. Can you boot with Knoppix? (http://www.knoppix.org)

    4. What boot image did you use and where did you get it from?
       I suggest to use

          http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/sid_d-i/netinst/>/daily/sarge-<your_arch>-netinst.iso

       where <your_arch> is one of alpha hppa i386 ia64 powerpc, and
       more in the works (size approx. 120 MB). These are the
       "bleeding edge" images, but they are the most recent ones,
       unless you download the CVS sources and built it yourself (not
       so simple)

       I guess you did use some image of the new installer, because the error
       messages indicate that. Read on.

    5. What is the exact error message, and can you reproduce it?

    > everal times i've gotten a debootstrap error because awk was
    > already there

       That error is a known bug: if you choose "install base system"
       again _without_recreating_the_filesystem_. So: go back to
       "Configure and mount partitions" and allow to unmount
       everything.

    > encountered while processing:
    > libopencdk8
    > libgnutils7
    > exim4-daemon-light
    > mailx
    > at
    > exim4
       
       This is also a known error on some images, but is fixed in the
       images mentioned above (unmet dependency).

    > /usr/sbin/debootstrap: 1: sleep: not found
      

       This is only irritating and can be savely ignored.

    6. If you have more Debian systems at hand ... then get
       grub-disk, create a nice boot floppy, READ THE DOCs, and use
       that to boot your new installation. Provided you have gotten
       everything right, and grub can find your new installation and
       boot it, then you can always install the boot loader manually.

       If you prefer lilo, I do not know, how to do this. The big
       difference between lilo and grub is, that lilo needs
       *everything* in the boot sector (that's why you must run lilo
       after every kernel update), whereas grub can read a filesystem
       and thus retrieve information from the filesystem to be
       booted. Thus you can type in anything needed at the grub boot
       prompt. IMHO much better to fix anything broken.

    7. The installation should provide a file install-report (or
       similar) in /root. This will point you to the debian-boot
       mailing list, along with a list of information that you should
       provide.

    8. If you do not want to mess with the new installer ---
       allthough I think it is quite usable now --- then I suggest to
       download the first woody CD, install a minimal system, and
       upgrade to "testing" aka "sarge" as someone else has already
       suggested.

    Hope this helps.
    How about subject: installation of sarge fails on IBM Thinkpad
    or something similar?

    Cheers,
    Erich 

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