Re: Help with Debian Install

On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 10:54:51PM -0000, Ed wrote:

I am not really sure. This is an old computer, but years ago, it had
Redhat Linux 7 and Windows 95 dual boot running fine. As time went by,
this computer was replaces with newer ones and slowly became obsolete.
Now I want to revive it and probably make it a print server, and maybe
web browser only machine, only running linux. I have never used debian
before, but heard it was a good candidate for an old machine. On my
other machines I run fedora 6 or 7. (and yes, I run Windows 2000 or XP)

Is there a way I can find out the network card and driver without taking
the machine apart. It is in kind of a hard place to get at right now.

Just do a minimal install from the netinst.iso. When you get to
choosing a mirror, choose none. Let it try to contact
security.debian.org, which will fail, but it will put a commented-out
line in your sources.list file.

When you get to task selector, deselect everything. You will then just
get a base install minimal system.

When you boot into the system and log in for the first time, you can
type:
# dmesg | less

and look for what hardware was found. The dmesg is a ring-buffer that
is filled by the kernel as hardware is found by the drivers. You should
see everything.

However, if this computer doesn't have a PCI bus but instead and
ISA/EISA bus, then there may be some more work to do since the hardware
set-up is different and not so automatic.

What kind of computer is this:

Processor:
Memory:
Hard drive space:
System bus type:

As long as you are able to install a base system, dmesg will tell you
most of this.

Doug.


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