TR Forums

Good afternoon...

My wife and I are putting together a Debian box to act as a nice basic web server. Can anyone point us to the best location we can d/l the basics of what we need to burn onto a CD?

For background, both of us are very good Win32 folks, reasonably good at unix, and pretty new to Linux (I've been using it at work but have not installed it before). Pointers and tips would be nice ... things like "you should FDISK a FAT32 partition on the HD before booting off the CD" or whatever...

-Polare

Go to http://www.linuxiso.org/ for images of Debian you can burn.

From what I understand, Debian has a pretty hellish installation, but I havn't tried to install it myself. I stick to FreeBSD, but I think everyone in the forums already knows that

It's quite involved, but very simple and logical.

I'd go straight to the Woody ISOs on ftp.fsn.hu . Woody should get frozen soon, and will become stable not long after that.

Sorry, Forge, you were a tad too late

We ended up going with FreeBSD simply because we're using a <1 gig hard drive and the FreeBSD install comes in a single .iso while the Debian takes 3.

So we repartitioned the HD to a clean FAT16 partition, burned the .iso to a disk, and booted off the CD. Everything goes great until we get through the configuration setup and the device probe gets to:
"Mounting root for (... ) ..."
And the whole thing stalls; it never seems to be able to mount the HD.

Anyone got some pointers on where to go next? The device probe clearly and correctly identifies the HD and the CD-ROM in the lines above the mount attempt. Do we need to format the partition? Do we need to delete the partition? Should it be FAT32? Etc. etc.

-Polare

edit: Note that the (...) ... above is actually filled in with a real mount point, I just failed to write it down so I abbreviated it.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Polare on 2002-01-23 23:56 ]</font>

Polare: download the Debian CD #1 and do a network install. You only need the CD for the base system, all packages can be installed over the 'net. I've also got a Debian install document that I wrote to help myself and others get started - let me know if you want a copy.

Bruce

Wierd problem you're having. Is that mount point /dev/md0c ? If so, that is the memory file system so you likely have a RAM problem. How much Ram do you have?

On 2002-01-24 09:32, cRock wrote:
Wierd problem you're having. Is that mount point /dev/md0c ? If so, that is the memory file system so you likely have a RAM problem. How much Ram do you have?

128 that checked out OK... hmm, maybe we'll try a different chip...

Thanks
-Polare

The other possibility is that you burned a bad CD. You might try booting from an installer floppy and see if you have the same problem.

I've also got a Debian install document that I wrote to help myself and others get started - let me know if you want a copy.

Bruce

I'm considering installing debian when iso 1 has downloaded (over 56k) and the new HDD arrives, so if you wouldn't mind I'd like to see that.

I'm not completely out of touch with Linux, having toyed with it a few times in the last couple of years but never made the jump before and left it installed (for various reasons, though usually I needed the HDD for another PC or it died). I'm coming to recognise though that I've been a Windows user too long .

Bruce if you could fire a copy of that install document of yours my way I would really appreciate it. I made a stab a debian once before but got screwed on the install somewhere along the line (getting x setup I believe). I would like to give it another try at some point. Thanks.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spune on 2002-01-24 13:47 ]</font>

Hi,

I'll dig it out at home tonight and post some time over the weekend. It's designed to get you a secure, current stable install without X, although there is some info on getting X configured (primarily with nVidia cards).

Bruce

Thanks for the file Bruce. I will use it at some point in the future, I'm have a good fight with SuSE at the moment but I'll probably give Debian a try again soon.

Thanks for emailing it Bruce, I've now managed to get it running with a functional install, including X. Still needs practice, but I'm more determined to stick to it this time. You make a good point when you say to install it a few times and blow it away until I get the hang of how it works .

Thanks for going to the effort of touching the article up (as well as writing it in the first place), it's very much appreciated.

Not a problem, glad it's been of use. If anyone else wants a copy drop me a line.

Now to get part two current....

Bruce