Hi, I did not test your multiboot system, and - apologies - I won't have time to do so. However, I installed woody on a pentium 4 system a couple of months ago. It had an Asus P4B - Board. I imagine these boards will be pretty common now and you might receive some feedback about it. These boards have a very annoying bios bug that makes booting Linux quite a feat.
The following is an e-mail exchange I had with somebody about the problem. Perhaps you find it helpful (if you don't decide to skip these stupid boards which would sympathize with ...): > Hi, > > I found a posting of you in > http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-boot%40lists.debian.org/m > sg13104.html > (and previous message, same board). I have the same > problem, though I > tried it with various woody rescue.bins. Have you found a > workaround? If > so, do you feel inclined to telling me about it? ;-) > I'd much appreaciate your help. > > If you can help me, please mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ([EMAIL PROTECTED] is a friends account). Otherwise sorry for > bothering. > > Cheers, > > Thorsten Hi Thorsten, Yes, I have worked around the problem. I won't get into the details of why the failure occurs, but it is definitely a BIOS bug. If you want the details, just let me know. The workaround requires that you be able to build a kernel on another machine. I'm not certain I remember everything. Unfortunately, I didn't keep my scratch notes:( Build a kernel specific to the P4B machine. Make sure the kernel includes support for FAT -- not as a module. You need FAT support so the installation program can read the Debian rescue.bin disk, or else it stops the installation cold. It seems like there was another kernel config that needed to be set, but I'm not sure. Make sure support for your NIC is compiled into the kernel, also. dd your new kernel image to the floppy. Then rdev it as follows: rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/fd0 rdev -r /dev/fd0 49152 The floppy should be ready to go. Insert it, cross your fingers and boot up. It will ask for the root disk and after that everything proceeds as if normal. Good luck. If you run into snags, let me know. I'll try to help as much as possible. cya Rob BTW: When you get a chance, complain to ASUS about the buggy BIOS. I did and also politely requested they become more open source friendly. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]