I thought I will share with those who are like me or still newbies my
... with debian. I have put .... simply I couldn't fill in the blanks.
I have started linux from those days, thanks to PCQ, when PCQ gave
slackware. Then moved to RH (various versions from once again PCQ), then
to SuSE (thanks to CHIP) and now to debian (Thanks to Network
computing). Previously it used to be dual booting only with some
version of windows and a linux to a version of windows and two flavours
of linux with 2 GB HDD and then 4.2 GB HDD. Now with two HDDs (4.2GB and
8.2GB), I had only winme and RH6.2. First HDD 4.2GB (hda) had only
winme in two partitions. I am not going to dwell on that. Second HDD had
one FAT32 partition and a linux partition for RH6.2 / and linux swap
partition. Thanks(?) to disk druid, few islands and one big chunk at the
end of this hard disk was free. This could be known with cfdisk.
Pri/Log Free
Space 8.23 hdb5 Boot
Logical Linux ext2 24.68
hdb7 Logical Linux
ext2 3150.29
logical 49.36
hdb6 Logical Win95
FAT32 3224.31
hdb8 Logical Linux
swap 123.38
Pri/Log Free Space
2039.87
As somebody might have guessed hdb5 is /boot for RH 6.2 and hdb7 / for
RH 6.2.
Now I can't do anything with the first 8.23 MB. I decided to have
logical 49.36 (say space A) as /boot partition for debian and last free
space (say space B) as / for debian. When I tried to make partition,
with cfdisk, once again I got into a problem. After making new
partitions of A and B with cfdisk while in RH linux, new problem cropped
up. table came as this.
Pri/Log Free
Space 8.23 hdb5 Boot
Logical Linux ext2 24.68
hdb7 Logical Linux
ext2 3150.29
hdb6 Logical Linux
ext2 49.36
hdb7 Logical Win95
FAT32 3224.31
hdb9 Logical Linux
swap 123.38
hdb2 Primary Linux
ext2 2039.87
Two hdb7? Then I had to quit with out writing partition table. (I will
appreciate if somebody could throw some light on this). I tried fdisk.
Still worst. Then I took the help of ranish partition manager (thanks to
him). Though it didn't show any hdb business, I was confident that was
ok. This was proved when I was installing debian.
Now Installing debian. Those habituated to RH (select some settings and
leave to package installation for 20 mins to 40 mins), debian needed my
full attention for more than two hours. I forgot to tell you one thing
before. I was using xosl to boot with lilo for RH in /boot. With that
confidence I installed lilo for debian also inits /boot. I didn't make
boot disk as advised (confidence?). Now from xosl I could boot debian.
well. Now I checked hdb for partition. It is like this.
Pri/Log Free
Space 8.23 hdb5 Boot
Logical Linux ext2 24.68
hdb6 Logical Linux
ext2 3150.29
hdb7 Logical Linux
ext2 49.36
hdb8 Logical Win95
FAT32 3224.31
hdb9 Logical Linux
swap 123.38
hdb2 Primary Linux
ext2 2039.87
OK.OK. Now alas! I tried from xosl for RH. No. It gave kernel panic.
What to do. I tried to change fstab in RH /etc from debian as I have
mounted / and /boot of RH as /rhroot and /rhboot while installing
debian. One more problem. No joe in the installed debian which i was
used to. Learnt vi. Edited Rh /etc/fstab. Still problem was not solved.
I had vmlinuz for RH in winme partition and also loadlin. Then booted to
dos and then did
loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb6. Voila! I could get into RH. Now I edited
RH /etc/lilo.conf for root=/dev/hdb6 (previously it was hdb7) and did
lilo -v. Now reboot. With xosl, I booted RH once again.
I hope it may be some use.
I will request debianers to tell me where to start to learn about this
potato(?)'s difference with RH.
--
L.V.Gandhi
MECON, 5th Floor, RTC Complex, Visakhapatnam AP 530020 INDIA
http://www.poboxes.com/lvgandhi [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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