debian on T43?

[alfio]

hi all

has anybody completed this install?

i'm having some problems getting debian etch to boot off my 2nd hard drive. i'm in the middle of yet another attempted install now (this time via net install directly into the 2nd HDD in the ultrabay slot), i'll post comments as soon as it's done downloading.

alfio

[alfio]

things went better when installing directly onto the HDD in the 2nd (ultrabay) slot. GRUB works well when i select the boot device list option and the system boots without difficulties.

what is not working, for some bizarre reason, is the swap partition. although i created one during the install for some reason it's not showing up. also, my wifi card is not working (intel b/g 2200). i'll work on those today

alfio

[Volker]

what is not working, for some bizarre reason, is the swap partition.

Check that the swap partition is listed in /etc/fstab.

If everything seems right, post the output of

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cat /proc/swaps
cat /etc/fstab

and, as root, list the partition table

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/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sdb

if you use the new libata or

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/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hdc

for the old ide system.

[alfio]

what is not working, for some bizarre reason, is the swap partition.

Check that the swap partition is listed in /etc/fstab.

If everything seems right, post the output of

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cat /proc/swaps

"Filename Type Size Used Priority/dev/sda1 partition 1951856 0 -1"

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cat /etc/fstab

"# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda2 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/sda1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0"

and, as root, list the partition table

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/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sdb

"Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 243 1951866 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 244 851 4883760 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 852 1459 4883760 83 Linux"

if you use the new libata or

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/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hdc

for the old ide system.

neither one of these commands produce any results

alfio

[alfio]

i figured out that suspend-to-RAM works with Fn+F4, i got the wireless working (ipw2200 bg), but i've still got these issues pending:

- suspend to disk is not working
- start-up is very slow, it hangs on with a message "ata1: port is slow to respond, please be patient"
- debian won't get past GRUB when the first HDD is installed (i'm running linux from the 2nd HDD / ultrabay slot), still not sure what to do about this but i need to keep the systems separate and XP as the default boot (i'd like to avoid adding it to GRUB if possible)


also, is there a way to recreate the start-up script in a terminal? there's a bunch of stuff i want to read but it flies by too fast.


alfio

[lightweight]

cat /proc/swaps

Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda1 partition 1951856 0 -1

Swap is mounted. You're fine.

- debian won't get past GRUB when the first HDD is installed (i'm running linux from the 2nd HDD / ultrabay slot),

fstab and likely GRUB are calling sda, which is the first harddisk. When one harddrive is running, this is fine.

Likely the dock's ATA controller considers its drive the second primary, and if so you must change these instances to sdc. If this is the case:

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perl -pi -e 's/sda/sdc/g' /etc/fstab
perl -pi -e 's/sda/sdc/g' /boot/grub/*

If this is incorrect and the dock's drive is considered a slave on the first controller -- and I hope someone corrects me -- change sdc in the search and replace above to sdb.

i need to keep the systems separate and XP as the default boot (i'd like to avoid adding it to GRUB if possible)

Respectfully, this is silly. GRUB to dual boot is good.

also, is there a way to recreate the start-up script in a terminal? there's a bunch of stuff i want to read but it flies by too fast.

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dmesg | less

<3

[bonestonne]

if the first HDD is running Windows [or partitioned NTFS at all], you need to install NTFS drivers, and enable write support for internal and external drives.

reboot with first HDD installed, problems should dissapear. ntfs-3g is the driver, available through add/remove programs...if not, just google it...its everywhere.

[Volker]

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perl -pi -e 's/sda/sdc/g' /etc/fstab
perl -pi -e 's/sda/sdc/g' /boot/grub/*

If this is incorrect and the dock's drive is considered a slave on the first controller -- and I hope someone corrects me -- change sdc in the search and replace above to sdb.

Indeed this is wrong. The ultrabay drive will show up as /dev/sdb

[alfio]

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perl -pi -e 's/sda/sdc/g' /etc/fstab
perl -pi -e 's/sda/sdc/g' /boot/grub/*

If this is incorrect and the dock's drive is considered a slave on the first controller -- and I hope someone corrects me -- change sdc in the search and replace above to sdb.

Indeed this is wrong. The ultrabay drive will show up as /dev/sdb

gents, thank you for taking the time to sort through my mess. what neither one of you is telling me, however, is how one makes these changes. can i get a little more detail (i'm a relative noob to linux as must be obvious from my posts)? thanks

alfio

[lightweight]

Thanks, Volker.

can i get a little more detail (i'm a relative noob to linux as must be obvious from my posts)?

I believe your issue with multiple drives stems from incorrect device names, likely due to configuration error when installing Debian. But I may be wrong.

Changing the device name for the purposes of boot involves three files on Debian (and most Linux using GRUB): /etc/fstab, /boot/grub/device.map, and /boot/grub/menu.lst

Invoking perl -pi -e allows search and replace of a string in one or many files. An alternative is sed, which you can read more about by running the command "man sed" The two lines under code above could be changed (change instances of sdc to sdb, per Volker's correction) and be run by root to change the relevant files.

But, admittedly, this is somewhat reckless. To be careful, as root let's copy these files to /root, then do the search and replace. Let's use a for loop because bash is cool, it might get you reading about bash as you're excited about Linux, and it will save us keystrokes.

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for i in "/etc/fstab" "/boot/grub/menu.lst" "/boot/grub/device.map"; do cp $i /root/`basename $i`.bak && perl -pi -e 's/sda/sdb/g' $i; done

If this breaks anything, you can boot off a live CD (like your Ubuntu disk you've mentioned elsewhere) and copy them back as root.

Hope this helps. <3