Re: installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
Am 2006-05-25 21:40:39, schrieb Liudmila Yafremava: > > Hello! > using only floppies. I made attempts to install both potato > and sarge that way, with the same result: after booting with a > linux boot floppy, the machine demands a root floppy but > never releases the floppy drive (it continues to spin). When, > ignoring that, I pull the boot floppy and replace it with the > root floppy, it responds with a bunch of queer messages and > "unable to mount root floppy" etc. Somewhere I read that > initial linux boot floppy does not have the pcmcia drivers > on it, so the machine may not be able to communicate with > its floppy in such an install. Correct me if I am wrong. I had this sort of problems too... But it is easy to solv, IF you 1) Can boot with a Win95B bootfloppy downloaded from the internet 2) Remove all what is not neccesary for creating a DOS partition and formating it. 3) Download syslinux.exe and rawread.exe from the internet and put it on the floppy too. 5) Boot the Floppy and crate a DOS partition of around 28 MByte and make it DOS bootable. 6) reboot the system and copy syslinux.exe and "example-preseed.txt" to the Harddrive C: 6) Rename the "example-preseed.txt" to "syslinux.cfg" and edit it to your needs 7) now on another system download the files boot.img.gz initrd.gz vmlinuz from the directory /debian/dists/sarge/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/ 8) Split the boot.img.gz into 6 parts of 1,3 MByte and transfer it to drive c: 9) Do the same with initrd.gz (3 parts) 10) vmlinuz can be copied directly 11) now resemble the singel parts with copy \b boot.img.gz.1 \b boot.img.gz.2 \b boot.img.gz.3 \b boot.img.gz.4 \b boot.img.gz.5 \b boot.img.gz.6 \b boot.img.gz.7 \b boot.img.gz.8boot.img.gz and copy \b initrd.gz.1 \b initrd.gz.2 \b initrd.gz.3 initrd.gz 12) now call syslinux c: which will write the bootsector... 13) If you NOW reboot the system, it will start the installation directly from the 28 MByte DOS-Partition ATTENTION: Instead of syslinux you can use loadlin.exe and the install.bat provided by Debian. In this case, you have not the need to make C: bootable for syslinux... ...and if you configure LILO/GRUB right after successfull installation, you can always boot into the DOS partition for new installations or such. Greetings Michelle Konzack -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSM LinuxMichi 0033/6/6192519367100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SOLVED: installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
Hi, All! This post will summarize installation of Debian Sarge on Toshiba Libretto 110CT. Thank you, Digby and Kevin, for your help. I did not use your suggestions directly, but you gave me ideas which got me thinking in the right direction. The main problem with Libretto 110ct is that it does not have any internal media drives: no floppy, no cd. All it has, is 2 PCMCIA slots. Its BIOS knows to boot from a PCMCIA floppy, but cannot boot from CD. If you have a blank hard drive, installation of Debian is quite difficult, as Debian installation from floppies requires a boot floppy and a root floppy, but the boot floppy does not have the drivers for PCMCIA floppy drive, so it cannot read the root floppy anyway. So, here's what I did. 1) Install MS-DOS. I used ms-dos 6.22 and installed ms windows 3.11 on top of that - all-flopy installations, no CDs involved. DOS deals with PCMCIA floppy drive just fine. Looking back, I probably did not need windows, just having dos there would suffice. At this point 2G out of 4G of my hard drive is fat-formatted (DOS did it for me). 2) Find and install DOS drivers for PCMCIA CD drive. I have CardPort drive, file cnf_6x.zip from DriverGuide worked. It is important that it's a DOS driver, and that instllation program is small enough that you can put it on a floppy and load into the newly-installed DOS on Libretto. 3) Download Sarge installation CDs from Debian site and burn them. Because the CDROM is now accessible from DOS, I copy the whole 1st Sarge CD onto hard drive. I copied both the .iso image and the CD itself, but I only needed the .iso image in the end. Now, other releases, like Woody, have a boot.bat in their /install directory of the first installation CD. You could copy loadlin, vmlinuz and initrd.gz into c:\ and run boot.bat from out of DOS and be happy. Well, Sarge does not have that. I looked for any installation scripts which I could run manually either from DOS or Linux on Sarge's first CD, and could not find them. Maybe I just don't get it because I am a girl, but in any case one can't install neither Sarge nor Woody on Libretto 110 CT from hard drive from out of DOS. Simply because they can't root themselves in RAM. I have 32M of RAM, and that is the minimum required for installation, so theoretically one should be able to root in RAM. Unfortunately, no matter what I did, I was getting the cramfs: wrong magic kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:00. upon invokation of loadlin c:\vmlinuz root=/dev/ram rw initrd=c:\initrd.gz. So, no installing from DOS. Thus, I needed some Linux installed on the Libretto before I get Sarge to install. 4) I got PartitionMagic and partitioned the rest of the disk into ext2. Note: it would have been better to create ext2 and a 128M swap at its end, see further item 8. 5) Download Damn Small Linux (same as Knoppix ?), make a CD and a bootable floppy. Copy Knoppix to the windows partition as described in their Wiki pages. Now I can boot into DOS with an empty floppy drive or into Knoppix with its boot floppy. 6) Boot into Knoppix. It mounted the fat partition on /cdrom. Mount the ext2 partition (/dev/hda2 in my case). Copy Sarge's 1st CD .iso file from fat partition into ext2 partition. Again, perhaps one could copy it directly from CD into ext2 partition, to save time. It's important that it's the .iso, not the CD itself - the installation manual says "Alternatively, if you intend to keep an existing partition on the hard drive unchanged during the install, you can download the hd-media/initrd.gz file and its kernel, as well as copy a CD iso to the drive (make sure the file is named ending in ".iso"). The installer can then boot from the drive and install from the CD image, without needing the network. OK, finding those /hd-media initrd.gz and vmlinuz files on the Debian sites was entertaining, but here is the link: http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sarge/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/ Put those files into /mnt/hda2 (whereto I just copied Sarge .iso) 7) Now the goal is to make /dev/hda2 bootable. I marked it as primary bootable by partitionmagic, so DOS would not get confused, but I am not sure it was necessary. Next, find where Knoppix keeps its lilo.conf. Copy it into /mnt/hda2, because Knoppix mounts everything on / except /mnt as read-only, so you can't edit its lilo.conf in its current location. Edit it as follows: #== lba32 # boot from hard drive hda boot=/dev/hda # comment out this line, otherwise lilo complains # install=/boot/boot-menu.b backup=/dev/null # this allows lilo to do its thing with the map on the partition I want to #make bootable. Don't know what it means, but without this lilo complains, # and it just works. Apologies for my ignorance. map=/mnt/hda2/map timeout=100 # comment out this line, otherwise lilo complains #vga=normal default=Debian_install imag
Re: installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
Hello, Digby and Kevin! So far the agreement between you guys and my other linux-friends seems to be that I should pull the hard drive and install on another system. I will do that as a last resort, because I will probably have a nightmare of a time configuring it on the libretto with all the devices. So, before I do that, I'd like to explore other options. Digby, you said that you installed Debian from SuSE using a hard drive install. What did you do? I am trying a hard drive install, but I am failing, as I described above. Will the difference be that I do it with loadlin and you did it with lilo? Can I get lilo going from dos? I have a 4G hard drive. Dos can only see 2 G of it, so I partitioned the other 2 G into ext2. I left 8M at the end of the disk for sleep/wake cycles (I read somewhere that's where libreto wants them on 4G drives...). I used root=/dev/ram, root=/dev/hda2, root=/dev/hdb2 and many other permutations of /dev/hd** with the same result. The only difference from trying to mount it in ram, is that for RAM-mount it complains cramfs: wrong magic and for /dev/hd** mount that message does not appear. I have 32 M of RAM, and during RAMDISK driver initialization (loadlin-boot method) it allocates 16 RAM disks with 8192 K size, 1024 blocksize. Is that a little much? Maybe my memory is corrupted somewhere, I'll check it out. I have pcmcia network cards and internet access though a modem on another machine, but I have no faith in being able to get pcmcia to work at such early stage of install. I could install windows95 from hard drive, install pcmcia ethernet card, and try to do a network install from my linux desktop at home. But, I have no idea how to configure things on the desktop to do that. Besides, I would only be able to do that if I could boot from hard drive, which I can't! I don't want to install over a modem from debian websites, because I do not trust security of my isp. If all else fails, I could probably get you a bootable Linux partition image which we would just need to get coppied into a partition on your hard drive. How would that work? Luda -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
Hello Luda, > So far the agreement between you guys and my other linux-friends seems to > be that I should pull the hard drive and install on another system. I will > do that as a last resort, because I will probably have a nightmare of a > time configuring it on the libretto with all the devices. I also prefer to do the initial install on the actual target if at all possible, although in general you can get a running system using a hard drive from an installation done on another machine. > So, before I do that, I'd like to explore other options. Digby, you > said that you installed Debian from SuSE using a hard drive install. What > did you do? I am trying a hard drive install, but I am failing, as I > described above. Will the difference be that I do it with loadlin and you > did it with lilo? Can I get lilo going from dos? It was quite different, - didn't require lilo or grub to start the initial install system. The procedure involved copying the installation system into a sub-directory on the SuSE system, and then chrooting into it, From there I was able to do a net-install using my PCMCIA ethernet card. Essentially it was the Debian net-install the SuSE kernel and drivers, but Debian filesystem and commands. This was back in January - I think the installation instructions may have changed since then.. and I have just finished an install on quite a different laptop, so my memory of what I did on the Libretto is now a bit hazy :-/ > I have a 4G hard drive. Dos can only see 2 G of it, so I partitioned the > other 2 G into ext2. I left 8M at the end of the disk for sleep/wake > cycles (I read somewhere that's where libreto wants them on 4G drives...). That doesn't sound right. If you partition the disk while it is in the Libretto, the BIOS knows about about the hibernation area and will reserve it automatically (it has to be big enough to store your entire memory - which is potentially 64MB). You only have to worry about about reserving it yourself if you use a HDD larger than 4GB, or do the partitioning in another machine. > I used root=/dev/ram, root=/dev/hda2, root=/dev/hdb2 and many > other permutations of /dev/hd** with the same result. The only difference > from trying to mount it in ram, is that for RAM-mount it complains > > cramfs: wrong magic > > and for /dev/hd** mount that message does not appear. > > I have 32 M of RAM, and during RAMDISK driver initialization > (loadlin-boot method) it allocates 16 RAM disks with 8192 K size, 1024 > blocksize. Is that a little much? Maybe my memory is corrupted somewhere, > I'll check it out. I havn't tried loadlin. If you give me the URL corresponding to the images you downloaded, I'll try them on the Windows partition on my system to see if they work for me. > I have pcmcia network cards and internet access though a modem on another > machine, but I have no faith in being able > to get pcmcia to work at such early stage of install. You'll definately need to get the initial install system booted first before you have any chance to use the network card. > I could install > windows95 from hard drive, install pcmcia ethernet card, and try to do a > network install from my linux desktop at home. But, I have no idea how to > configure things on the desktop to do that. Besides, I would only be able > to do that if I could boot from hard drive, which I can't! I don't want to > install over a modem from debian websites, because I do not trust security > of my isp. In that case a netinstall is probably not very practical. If your desktop machine has a CD or DVD, you would probably be better off just using the network to do a remote CD/DVD based install. > >If all else fails, I could probably get you a bootable Linux partition > >image which we would just need to get coppied into a partition on > >your hard drive. > > How would that work? If you create a partition of corresponding size, then you would just need to copy the image into it. I'm not a Windows person, so I don't know the easiest way to do it from windows. I would probably download a hosted inferno system (Inferno is an operating system that can run on top of windows, and gives you access to Unix style commands like dd), but it might be a bit of a diversion if you are not familiar with it. You could also try booting from a linux rescue floppy, mount the DOS partition, and use 'dd' to write the image to the linux partition. Then use lilo on the floppy to boot to it, and if that works install lilo or grub onto your HDD MBR. Regards, DigbyT -- Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt(at)digbyt.com http://www.digbyt.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
Hi Liudmila, I have Debian (amoungst other things) running on a Libretto 110CT. It is a nice little machine once you get it installed, but as you have discovered, one of the more challenging install targets... The PCMCIA floppy is of limitted use for installation, because it is PCMCIA and only the BIOS knows how to read it. Once you have booted, if a second or more floppies are required by the installer (as is often the case to load extra modules), you are stuck. The 800x480 screen was hard to get going other than at 640x480 originally, but I think the X server on Sarge worked ok out of the box. The way I got my system installed (which probably won't help you directly) was.. 1. Red Hat Install - could not use any PCMCIA device (floppy, CD, ethernet) due to modules needed from a second floppy, so configured a desktop machine as a CD server and used a laplink cable and PLIP. 2. Replaced RedHat with SuSE, bootstrapping from the RedHad installation. 3. Installed Debian Sarge using had disk install from SuSE. I have since installed on a number of Libretto's by 'cheating' and just installing the hard drive in a desktop machine using a 2.5" cable adapter, and dd'ing a copy of my current system onto the partition. I have also upgraded the hard drive several times, and am now at 100GB. Be careful not to create any partitions that overlap with the hibernation area on the disk. If your disk is larger than 4GB it will be in the middle of the disk somewhere. (Cylinder 1018-1042 on mine). The hard disk install from Windows that you are trying is probably the easiest option for you. I havn't tried it myself, especially with such an old version of Windows (my Libretto came with W95 installed). The diagnostic seems to indicate a problem mounting your ramdisk, so I would check the integrity of the image and the arguments to loadlin. If nobody more familiar with Windows offers any insights there, I could give it a go on my machine and see if it boots from my W95 partition. Also, you didn't mention how large you hard disk is, and what you have in the way of network connectivity. Those items will probably effect the choice of install strategy. If all else fails, I could probably get you a bootable Linux partition image which we would just need to get coppied into a partition on your hard drive. Regards, DigbyT On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 09:40:39PM -0500, Liudmila Yafremava wrote: > > Hello! > > I have been trying to install Sarge on Toshiba Libretto 110ct > for weeks with no success. I gravely need someone to take me > through it, as I feel that I've tried everything and can't > think of anything else to do. > > The laptop had an empty hard drive and external PCMCIA > floppy and cd drives. It cannot boot from cd drive, only > from floppy or hard drive. I installed dos on it and > formatted the hard drive. At first, I tried to do an install > using only floppies. I made attempts to install both potato > and sarge that way, with the same result: after booting with a > linux boot floppy, the machine demands a root floppy but > never releases the floppy drive (it continues to spin). When, > ignoring that, I pull the boot floppy and replace it with the > root floppy, it responds with a bunch of queer messages and > "unable to mount root floppy" etc. Somewhere I read that > initial linux boot floppy does not have the pcmcia drivers > on it, so the machine may not be able to communicate with > its floppy in such an install. Correct me if I am wrong. > > So, after a lot of messing around I installed windows 3.1 > and pcmcia cdrom drivers for dos which allowed me to copy > the whole debian disk 1 onto the harddrive. I followed the > instructions in the installation manual for a hard drive > install. I copied loadlin, vmlinuz, initrd.gz and the .iso > file for the 1st of the sarge install cds onto c:\ and > tried installing linux by invoking > > loadlin c:\vmlinuz root=/dev/ram rw initrd=c:\initrd.gz. > > This results in scanning of vmlinuz and initrd, with a bunch > of boot messages and finally > > cramfs: wrong magic > kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:00. > > I tried changing the root= parameter, I downloaded > vmlinuz and initrd.gs from sarge's hd-media subfolder, > but all that results in kernel panic and inability to mount > root fs. I copied root.img onto c:\ with no results. > > I tried using sbm to tell the laptop to boot from the cd, > but sbm cannot see the device. I guess it is not an ide. > > I know I am pretty clueless when it comes to linux, but > I have installed debian on a few machines before, and I am > able to follow the instructions.. What am I missing? I am > stumped. Please help. > > > Thanks, > Luda > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt(at)digbyt.com http://www.digbyt.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAI
Re: installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 09:40:39PM -0500, Liudmila Yafremava wrote: > > Hello! > > I have been trying to install Sarge on Toshiba Libretto 110ct > for weeks with no success. I gravely need someone to take me > through it, as I feel that I've tried everything and can't > think of anything else to do. Hi Liudmila, I have a 100ct. I installed redhat 7.2 long ago and then upgraded to Debian Sarge. The way I did it was a bit complicated, so I will tell you an easier way. 1) remove the 2.5" hd from the libretto 2) get a 2.5"=>3.5" hd adapter (about $5) 3) install this in a regular desktop pc 4) put sarge cd in cdrom 5) install sarge 6) remove hd 7) reinstall in libretto 8) fix settings cheers, Kev ps. once you get the hd back in, email for info about tweaking the settings. -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
installing sarge from hard drive on libretto110ct
Hello! I have been trying to install Sarge on Toshiba Libretto 110ct for weeks with no success. I gravely need someone to take me through it, as I feel that I've tried everything and can't think of anything else to do. The laptop had an empty hard drive and external PCMCIA floppy and cd drives. It cannot boot from cd drive, only from floppy or hard drive. I installed dos on it and formatted the hard drive. At first, I tried to do an install using only floppies. I made attempts to install both potato and sarge that way, with the same result: after booting with a linux boot floppy, the machine demands a root floppy but never releases the floppy drive (it continues to spin). When, ignoring that, I pull the boot floppy and replace it with the root floppy, it responds with a bunch of queer messages and "unable to mount root floppy" etc. Somewhere I read that initial linux boot floppy does not have the pcmcia drivers on it, so the machine may not be able to communicate with its floppy in such an install. Correct me if I am wrong. So, after a lot of messing around I installed windows 3.1 and pcmcia cdrom drivers for dos which allowed me to copy the whole debian disk 1 onto the harddrive. I followed the instructions in the installation manual for a hard drive install. I copied loadlin, vmlinuz, initrd.gz and the .iso file for the 1st of the sarge install cds onto c:\ and tried installing linux by invoking loadlin c:\vmlinuz root=/dev/ram rw initrd=c:\initrd.gz. This results in scanning of vmlinuz and initrd, with a bunch of boot messages and finally cramfs: wrong magic kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:00. I tried changing the root= parameter, I downloaded vmlinuz and initrd.gs from sarge's hd-media subfolder, but all that results in kernel panic and inability to mount root fs. I copied root.img onto c:\ with no results. I tried using sbm to tell the laptop to boot from the cd, but sbm cannot see the device. I guess it is not an ide. I know I am pretty clueless when it comes to linux, but I have installed debian on a few machines before, and I am able to follow the instructions.. What am I missing? I am stumped. Please help. Thanks, Luda -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
