We have been trying all weekend to get the Debian on a RaQ2. We tried the how-to from Paul's instructions but could never get past net booting. We have made a much better progress with Mark's how-to, but are having MAJOR roadblocks at the partitioning section on the Debian Installer.
A couple of questions and what environment we are in, maybe this can answer why we are having so much trouble. We are using a Mac OS X Panther 10.3.4 as our desktop machine to reformat the hard drives, since we don't have any available PC type machines to use. I do remember reading somewhere that you had to do something different if the drives had BSD partitions, and since OS X is based on a BSD system could it be when we format to drives they are in the wrong format? We are using Apples, Disk Utility tool, it has a Unix Format, but doesn't allow a selection on the type of *nix format. Also we tried 15 gig drives, the Raq2 will go from Net Booting to the selection of NFS, and start to pull down the files from a mirror. When we place a 40 gig drive it never leaves Net Booting. Is there a limit on the hard drive? Or could it relate to the above issue/statement? When we are able to get a download, though we have had mirrors not respond and we keep hitting retry or will select a different mirror. Do some mirrors not carry the same versions as other mirrors? Which version should we really be downloading? Stable - Testing or Unstable? When we do get a completed mirror download, we don't have the partitioning tool, or it will not list the hard drive, which leads me back to thinking or Mac is formatting in a way that the Debian installer will not recognize it? We also have a fellow Cobalt guru that originally mentioned we try this, as he would like to get Debian on the RAQ2's, and we offered to help out, since we run a slew of X86 Debian servers here without any issue, in fact we are always bragging about the stability and ease of using apt-get. He is also attempting but can't get a mirror to download, though he is behind a firewall though when he does a regular Debian BF4 install they work fine. We are on a public side for this RaQ2 install. I have read as much as I can, as well as have re-read the archives, and still am at a loss on what we are missing. If any of the MIPS gurus on the list could toss anything for us to try I would be happy to attempt. Waiting and struggling... -- David Thurman The Web Presence Group http://www.the-presence.com Web Development/E-Commerce/CMS/Hosting/Dedicated Servers 800-399-6441/309-679-0774
