I am new to the list and Linux/Debian but impressed and working my way through "Running Linux" having read the 1.3 installation book. I've got a problem and two hypotheses about it but think I'd do well to tap into the list expertise already in case it will save much time and hair loss! TIA to any who step in with pertinent experience!
I'm installing on a machine that had NT 3.51 on it. It's a weird box: an ASUS motherboard with twin Pentium 90MHz, 64Mb of RAM and the driver controller is an Adaptec 3940/3940W. That has two SCSI channels and worked fine under NT 3.51 (and 3.5 before that). On the first channel the machine has a 1Gb IBM drive and a Quantum XP34300 as well as a Toshiba CDROM. I think those two drives and the CDROM were seen and used fine by my first install. The odd thing is that the install also detected the three (I said it was an odd box!) disk drives on the second SCSI channel of the Adaptec but wouldn't format them, complaining about a "bad partition table" (that may not have been word perfect). I managed to get a bit more info. that seemed to say that partitions weren't falling on the heads/tracks it thought they should. The install wouldn't do anything with them. The drives are two Seagates, an ST41650 and an ST42100 and a Quantum Fireball ST4.3S. I have two hypotheses: 1) That the Debian install repartitioning software doesn't like partition information left by NT and those drives were still NTFS formatted whereas the two drives recognised and reformatted OK had been converted to FAT when I was getting enough DOS access to the CDROM to start the install off. 2) That Debian 1.3 default SCSI drivers don't work correctly (perhaps I have to tell them something as a command line parameter?) with the 3940/3940W second channel despite apparently seeing the drives that are on it. I'm low level reformatting all the drives at the Adaptec hardware level (slooo..ow) prior to reinstalling DOS, windows, adaptec DOS handlers and then restarting the install of Debian. I am planning to make sure all the drives can be DOS partitioned and formatted using the Adaptec DOS/Win3.1 drivers prior to the Debian install and I'm happy to be installing again as there were things I got wrong about the network card and as the file system/partition organisation I chose that time was daft. However, I'd hate to end up doing all this umpteen times so I'd really appreciate any advice. I'd rather not move all the drives to the first SCSI channel as the cabling is a nightmare to do and as I know this arrangement has worked. Any help out there? TIA, best wishes all, Chris Chris Evans, Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy, Locum Consultant to the Prudence Skynner Family Therapy Clinic, St. George's Hospital Medical School, London University [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://psyctc.sghms.ac.uk/ -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null