Take a Break
Can't figure out that problem with your Debian box? Take your mind off it for a bit and play Trade Wars 2002 at http://franknputer.com It's fun. It's free.
CRCD
CRCD makes recovery CD's for Linux http://annex.com/craig/crcd.htm
How to Make a Debian Rescue CD from Windows
Someone asked about making Debian CD's from Windows. Here's how I've been doing it; Create an archive on your Windows machine, for example c:\debian_cd Copy the 2880K rescue image (from disks-i386/2.2.4-2000-01-03/disks-2.88 in the master archive) to c:\debian_cd Copy drivers.tgz, disks-1.44/rescue.bin, and base2_2.tgz (from disks-i386/2.2.4-2000-01-03 in the master archive) to c:\debian_cd\debian\dists\potato\main\disks-i386\current Create another directory for the .deb's, for example c:\debian_cd\archive Copy all of the .deb's for the packages you want to c:\debian_cd\archive You may already have them available from /var/cache/apt/archives if you haven't cleaned it out. Create a template using your Windows CD software. Set the CD's root to mirror c:\debian_cd. Add bootcatx.bin from the following utility to the CD root first. http://annex.com/craig/archive/mkbtcd102.zip Create the ISO image using your Windows CD software. Be sure to set the file system to ISO9660 with Rockridge extensions (long file names). Mode 1 seems to work best. Use the mkbootcd utility to make the image bootable. Here is a usage example for mkbootcd.exe; mkbootcd cdimage.iso bootcatx.bin rescue.bin Typing mkbootcd without any command line parameters will display a help screen Create the CD using your Windows CD software. Boot and load the system with the CD you just made. Prior to using the apt-get method, mount the CD and copy the contents of /archive to /var/cache/apt/archives You can make fresh CD's periodically to minimize the number of downloads and upgrades after install. One handy feature of dpkg is dpkg --set-selections selections where selections is an ascii file listing user desired selections. The format can be seen by using dpkg --get-selections. An install script could look like this; echo apt apt /var/lib/dpkg/cmethopt echo deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free /etc/apt/sources.list dpkg --clear-avail dselect update dpkg --set-selections ./selections dselect install -- Craig H. Block, Debian user Debian GNU/Linux potato Linux 2.2.13 SMP i686
Re: Debian and Redhat
snip However, there are some software that these servers MUST have, right now it's Legato Networker and the UPS software (not sure which UPS system we will use yet). Both have support for Linux, but only RedHat. I'v made debian packages of Networker from the RPM package, and they works fine. I'll try to do the same with the UPS sw as soon as we recieve it. snip If you are using APC UPS then you should check their website. I sent them an email a couple months ago about PowerChute for Linux and they said it should be available this quarter. You can use a script called rpm2cpio to extract the compressed tarballs from the rpm's if your conversion tool gives you problems. You can get it here: http://glide.xxedgexx.com/3DfxNoRPMS.html snip Can I be sure that binaries compiled against RedHat5.x always runs under Debian 2.1? My common sence says yes, since they are both based on glibc2.0 and the same free software, but... I dont mind some tweaking, but I dont want to spend weeks to get it to work. snip I would say certainly yes as long as the system supports the applications's depencies on C lib and possibly X libs if it runs on X.
Re: RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
In attempting to install Debian 2.1 from resc1440 floppy onto an HP intel box with SCSI disks that had run Windows-NT, I get the error: RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0 and the boot stops. That is a normal message stating that the kernel has found a root image which is what you would expect it to do. The system is hanging when it attempts to load the image from the disk. I would suspect a bad floppy, a bad floppy drive, or a bad image. Redownload resc1440.bin and rawrite it to another floppy. If that doesn't work try another floppy drive. Here is a quote from install.txt 5.9.3. Floppy Disk Reliability-- The biggest problem for people installing Debian for the first time seems to be floppy-disk reliability. The Rescue Floppy is the floppy with the worst problems, because it is read by the hardware directly, before Linux boots. Often, the hardware doesn't read as reliably as the Linux floppy disk driver, and may just stop without printing an error message if it reads incorrect data. There can also be failures in the Drivers Floppy and the base floppies, most of which indicate themselves with a flood of messages about disk I/O errors. If you are having the installation stall at a particular floppy, the first thing you should do is re-download the floppy disk image and write it to a _different_ floppy. Simply reformatting the old floppy may not be sufficient, even if it appears that the floppy was reformatted and written with no errors. It is sometimes useful to try writing the floppy on a different system. One user reports he had to write the images to floppy _three_ times before one worked, and then everything was fine with the third floppy. Other users have reported that simply rebooting a few times with the same floppy in the floppy drive can lead to a successful boot. This is all due to buggy hardware or firmware floppy drivers. The first thing the kernel does after loading is initialize the system hardware. The kernel detects hardware via built in probing algorithms or by querying the BIOS depending on the kernel version. The hardware it looks for is based on options selected when the kernel was compiled. Initialization is where most hardware problems are made evident. The kernel will output an error and press on in most cases, but in severe cases the system may hang or even reboot. This doesn't mean that if your kernel boots without errors your system is free from hardware anomalies. It just means the kernel was able to initialize your hardware and ready it for use. Forgive me if I am being rhetorical here, using the shift + pgup or pgdwn keys at the console will enable you to scroll the kernel's output for review. The rescue kernel does not actually need to read any of the hard disk partitions to boot-up since it reads the root file system, from the floppy in your case, and mounts it into RAM. Disk partitions and filesystems are handled by standard Linux utilities like fdisk and mke2fs usually during the install process so the fact that the drive contains a compressed FAT16 partition is immaterial. Hope this helps and good luck :)
To the Debian Project, IMHO
I have been a Debian user for several years now. The first time I loaded it was before the Bo version. I compared it to what was available at the time and chose Debian mainly because of the installation control it offered via dpkg and dselect. But I also preferred just about everything else specific to Debian. I felt Debian provided me with a distribution oriented towards the power user and have stuck with it since. My system works exactly the way I want it to and only with Debian could I have tailored it so thoroughly. It pleases me greatly every time I work with it. Although dselect is becoming unruly with the huge number of packages that have become available in recent versions, I still prefer it over other package tools because of the two things that are becoming more scarce every day with modern software, that is control and flexibility. There seems to be a wave of opinion, in the software industry, that the value of software should be primarily gauged by its level of grandmatization (the unrealistic practice of engineering software so that even grandma can install and use it). The important measures of its value such as content, stability, capability, and flexibility are being placed secondary. This counter productive philosophy, started by the biggest and best example of what software should not be and you know who I'm talking about, is propagating at the expense of the truly important measures. Extrapolated to the end result, it's computer fascism. I will have no choices when I install software and will not be able to change anything after I do. Some operating systems and applications are almost to that point already. After reading the last few months worth of newsletters at debian.org, I am concerned that the Debian project may be buying into this foolishness. My hope is that Debian sticks to their guns as a distribution for power users and does not jump on the grandmatization bandwagon. To the Debian organization; please don't worry about the unimportant aspects and concentra te on the important ones. I want control, flexibility, stability, and content. I DO NOT care how difficult or time consuming (barring problematic) an installation process is. If my refusal to compromise any of these important aspects means I have to spend more time answering questions and entering configuration choices during an installation process or even editing configuration files by hand, then so be it!
Re: Problem mounting custom boot disk
You won't be able to mount the floppy since make zdisk does not create a file system on the floppy. Try dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/zImage where the first parameter is your floppy drive and the second is the path and filename where you want the image copied. Normally you would boot off the floppy to test the new kernel and then if looks good, copy it from /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/zImage to /boot and then run lilo to make it bootable. It must be named as specified in lilo.conf David Kanter wrote: Last night I compiled a new kernel and had it sent to a boot floppy instead of the hard drive (using the standard Debian tools for compiling a new kernel). Booting from the floppy is fine. However, I'd like to mount the floppy and get the kernel image off of it, move it to /boot, and then re-configure LILO to run it. I've tried multiple variations of mount: -t vfat, -t msdos, and nothing at all (i.e., ext2). Each time I get a message that I have either chosen the wrong file system, or a couple other problems. What should I do?
Re: Problem mounting custom boot disk
David Kanter wrote: Last night I compiled a new kernel and had it sent to a boot floppy instead of the hard drive (using the standard Debian tools for compiling a new kernel). Booting from the floppy is fine. However, I'd like to mount the floppy and get the kernel image off of it, move it to /boot, and then re-configure LILO to run it. I've tried multiple variations of mount: -t vfat, -t msdos, and nothing at all (i.e., ext2). Each time I get a message that I have either chosen the wrong file system, or a couple other problems. What should I do? You won't be able to mount the floppy since make zdisk does not create a file system on the floppy. Try dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/zImage where the first parameter is your floppy drive and the second is the path and filename where you want the image copied. Normally you would boot off the floppy to test the new kernel and then if looks good, copy it from /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/zImage to /boot and then run lilo to make it bootable. It must be named as specified in lilo.conf
Re: To the Debian Project, IMHO
snip When trying to install debian, I am simply overwhelmed by the number of packages I have to deal with... snip I have a solution for that problem using a setup script as follows. I simply copy this script and a selections file into ~/deb21 after bypassing dselect during initial install. The selections file (dpkg-selections) can be generated from an existing install with dpkg --get-selections. A person could design a custom interactive interface to generate the selections file and avoid dselect's selector altogether. This script is a good example of dselect's and dpkg's power and flexibility. #! /bin/bash grep -q /dev/hdc /cdrom /etc/mtab if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then mount /dev/hdc /cdrom if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then exit; fi fi grep 2/4 /cdrom/.disk/info if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo Wrong CD; umount /dev/hdc; exit; fi umount /dev/hdc if [ ! -f /var/lib/dpkg/methods/multicd/shvar.multi_cd ]; then dselect access fi if [ ! -f /var/lib/dpkg/methods/multicd/available ]; then dselect update; fi dpkg --set-selections ~/deb21/dpkg-selections if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo Could not set selections; exit; fi dselect install dselect config dselect remove
