September 29, 2004
Goodbye Woody, hello Sarge

So far, so futile. :-(

Plan A was to install Debian 3.0 r2 (Woody). The install process dies on the first reboot:

Aiee, killing interrupt handler!
In interrupt handler - not syncing.

I don't appear to be the only one with this issue - it appears that roadwarrior's hardware isn't compatable with Woody.

I know all the hardware can be made to work with Linux, though - Knoppix 3.6 drives everything fine. So, Plan B was to install from Knoppix, but that didn't work either:

Error: Formatting of  failed.

I'm not alone in having this problem, either, but I don't have a scooby what to do about it.

Now, I'm sure that if I were a Linux guru, I'b be pulling working bits out of Knoppix and stuffing them into Woody, but frankly, I wouldn't know where to start. So, Plan C is to grab Sarge and see how far I get with that.

Posted to Linux by Simon Brunning at September 29, 2004 10:47 AM
Comments

What a hassle.

Q: Why those versions of Unix in particular?

Posted by: Mark Matthews on September 29, 2004 11:03 AM

Debian has been consistently recommended to me both face-to-face and online - see http://www.brunningonline.net/simon/blog/archives/001569.html for instance. I think that the real problem there was that I was being such a wuss and getting the (two year old) stable version rather than the testing version, which is reputedly as stable as other people's test versions.

Knoppix because I aready had it, and cos it just *works*. It's like black magic - wack in the CD, boot, and it picks up *all* your hardware. Give it a try - is won't touch your hard disk unless you go a long way out of your way to tell it to, so your existing Windows installation will be quite safe.

Posted by: Simon Brunning on September 29, 2004 11:10 AM

I've used debian fairly extensively as the company we host with builds debian boxes, and they are really nice generally speaking. However personally I wouldn't want to install debian :-)

I used SuSE at home as my desktop PC for about three years and so if I was going to install anything I would install that.

Posted by: Richard Chamberlain on September 29, 2004 11:12 AM

Simon, your three step plan to Debian delight;

1. Boot with a Knoppix Live CD
2. Turn it into a hard drive installation
3. sudo apt-get update; apt-get upgrade

Bob will then be your Aunty's live in lover.

Posted by: Andy Todd on September 29, 2004 03:33 PM

p.s. Knoppix *is* Debian, hence the simplicity of my cunning plan. All it add to a bog standard version of Debian is the live CD and hardware detection wizadry.

Posted by: Andy Todd on September 29, 2004 03:34 PM

Andy,
I tried that. Phase two went a bit Pete Tong - see above. :-(

Still, I don't want to tempt fate, but Sarge seems to be installing well. It's getting all the packages via HTTP, though, so it's taking a *looooooong* time.

Posted by: Simon Brunning on September 29, 2004 03:36 PM

I still must highly recommend the new debian-installer at http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ . I think it's easier than the various knoppix solutions discussed. I typically start with a "minimal" installation and then add packages as needed.

Chris

Posted by: Chris on September 29, 2004 06:54 PM

I'm having real trouble with knoppix, has anyone managed to install it yet?

Posted by: Leo on October 8, 2004 07:23 PM
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