LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: branko@senet.com.au
  To  : Bob Smith <studmuffin9@usa.net>
  Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:48:16 +0930 (CST)

Re: Debian

Bob Smith wrote:

>Red Hat boots fine on my computer, but for some reason when I try to install
>Debian, the boot disk just keeps rebooting the computer after it says "loading
>linux." Does anyone know how I can fix the problem? Thanks alot in advance.

Bob,

Its not clear if you are using boot floppy disk or CD, so two answers
for the price of one.

Here's an extract from the file /install/install.txt from my 
Debian 2.1 CD:

Quote..
  The biggest problem for people installing Debian for the first time
  seems to be floppy-disk reliability.

  The Rescue Floppy is the floppy with the worst problems, because it is
  read by the hardware directly, before Linux boots. Often, the hardware
  doesn't read as reliably as the Linux floppy disk driver, and may just
  stop without printing an error message if it reads incorrect data.
  There can also be failures in the Drivers Floppy and the base
  floppies, most of which indicate themselves with a flood of messages
  about disk I/O errors.

  If you are having the installation stall at a particular floppy, the
  first thing you should do is re-download the floppy disk image and
  write it to a _different_ floppy. Simply reformatting the old floppy
  may not be sufficient, even if it appears that the floppy was
  reformatted and written with no errors. It is sometimes useful to try
  writing the floppy on a different system.
Unquote.

Also from the same file:

  The `tecra' images are an alternate kernel for people who have
  problems with the standard disks.

... which is in reference to floppy disks but a little later the
reader will discover that the second binary CD ROM uses the tecra
image - which may be of help if you are booting from that media.

PS, for Debian 2.0 my old 386 needed the tecra boot image with some
additional boot parameters.

Good Luck, 
-- 
Branko Bratkovic
branko@senet.com.au

-- 
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