Ivan, From the info supplied, it seems you may have some yet Ill defined incompatibility between, Linux and your ATAPI CD, since the CD does work under Win95. You can try reading another CDROM. just do assess whether (unlikely) some problem with the Debian CD) This is only a slight difficulty so far as installation goes. I' ve had to proceed as follows to install Debian in a minimal partition on a Win95 dedicated company Laptop. Some of the following is just copied form the standard Installation directions. Be sure to read them.
1) Make a LX (linux) folder in your WIN95 partition and copy the following files from your CDROM: 2) resc1440.bin, drv1440.bin, base2_0.tgz, root.bin, linux, install.bat and loadlin.exe, Rawrit2.exe, and the Packages file from hamm on the CD. Also to make your mouse usefull fast also copy in: gpm-.deb from Section misc , where - herein indicates the version info gpm is GeneralPurposeMouse libgpm1 from Section libs which is needed by gpm. Also at this stage I prepare for the powerfull file manager mc-Midnight Commander, which would additional require: libcomerr-.deb, from Section Lib libext2fs-.deb " libgpmg1-.deb " slang-.deb Section oldlibs mc-.deb from Section utils 3) Use Rawrit2 to make the Rescue floppy 4) During the Installation starting from the rescue floppy, specify when requested that /dev/hda1/lx has the installation files During the kernel/modules configuration do specify the vfat module so you can read long file names within your Win95 partition. 5) When the base installation is done you'll go through a reboot some etc and dselect will be brought up. Record the DSELECT command but QUIT from that menu. 6) Enter script Today.txt to automatically record what you are doing in Today.txt, which is terminated by exit later It's nice at this point to see things in color by alias ls="ls --color" or by editing your .bashrc file by ae .bashrc followed by a source .bashrc to implement Do an ls / to see the colorization effect 7) Get the mouse working with mount /dev/hda1 -t vfat /mnt dpkg-i /mnt/lx/libgpmg-.deb dpkg-i /mnt/lx/gpm-.deb Now you are enabled to Mark with left button by hold&drag and Copy-onto with right button. Thus later recording long file names and text blocks won't be a pain. Do Alt-F2 and login as root to the 2nd console. ae to start an elementary editor, into which you can copy needed info. You get between console screens with Alt-F1, Alt-F2, Alt-F3 etc. I recommend that now you similarly install mc via dpkg-i /mnt/lx/(the list for mc stuff above, one at a time). With mc you can now start looking through your installation in progress to see what is going. dpkg and dselect use subdirectories of /var/lib/dpkg to operate. You can read therein, but DO NOT alter files. 8) See if you can run pppconfig, pon (provider on line by ppp) after completing your ppp configuration and connect with your IP at this point. You can monitor your ppp attempts with cat /var/log/ppp.log 9) At this point under dselect You can try doing the rest of the Installation from a) the cranky CDROM b) by FTP if your access time isn't costly or 10 10) within dselect a) under ACCESS methods, specify Mounted Specify that the Packages file is in /mnt/lx b) UPDATE from the Packages file c) within SELECT, there will already be indicated a large number of files recommended to enrich your installation. write them down or Copy into your open ae docment including the section they are in/ d) when done Save the ae file, say needed.txt and copy it cp needed.txt /mnt/lx QUIT dselect e) reboot and open Win95 f) copy needed files from the CDROM into C:\lx g) reboot under linux h) start dselect and install the files from the C:\lx. The common hardest part of these options is getting used to dselect which doesn't at all mind being aborted with Ctrl-C and restarted later. MarvS ============= >Ivan wrote: > > At 11:56 AM 18-10-98 +0100, you wrote: > > > >> I have recently purchased hamm on cd from dvd rent (Victoria, Australia) > >> and tried MANY times to install > > > >You might want to try making a set of rescue floppies and booting from > >those... > > > >Matthew