Marcus Johnson wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
> Well I really wanted to start over at this point. I just wanted to
> wipe the partition clean and start over. So I rebooted and tried to
> reinitialize my Linux root partition. That worked. I mounted it as
> root. Then I tried to reinstall the kernel and base OS. Instead of
> starting from a clean state I think there is still remnants on the
> partition because it tries to use a "recovery floppy image" from off
> of the CD-ROM, but it fails. It not only fails it takes ages to
> decide to fail <very user unfriendly in this respect>. So now I'm
> really stuck. I have no idea where to go from here. <The doesn't
> seem to provide any help at this point> Help! Ack!
>
> And oh, was the answer to the block device question /dev/hdc ?
>
> Thank you for patiently helping a newbie,
>
> Marcus
>
On a more common computer, one with one IDE (EIDE) hard drive and one
ATAPI cdrom drive, the block devices would be hd=/dev/hda,
cdrom=/dev/hdb.
Basically, the 'master' hard drive would be /dev/hda, the secondary
hard drive (if present) would be /dev/hdb, and the cdrom would be last,
i.e. hdb or hdc depending on how many hard drives are on the system. If
you have a system with multiple IDE controllers then things get even
more complicated. :-)
As for starting over, try deleting the Linux partitions with DOS fdisk,
then rerunning the install process. If the install program doesn't see
any Linux partitions when it starts up, then it should start from the
beginning.
I can't help much more, I haven't had the need to install Debian in a
long while.
--
Ed C.
