On one of the computer systems here, I am suddenly unable to use the Debian
installation disks.
Details:
I am using a boot floppy made from a file dated something like May 4.
It boots version 1.3.95.
The boot seems to go OK; i.e., the kernel loads without any obvious problems.
Then I insert the root floppy, and the system reports that it sees a
Minix file system.
Shortly thereafter (i.e., approximately 3 dozen '<5>''s later) I start
seeing errors of this type:
"VFS: brelse: Trying to free free buffer."
This appears about 50 times.
What happens next varies.
Sometimes I see:
"Init: started. Init: executing etc/rc auto"
"Init: executing sh"
"Segmentation fault"
"block_device: not found"
Then the computer goes into what I think is some kind of stack dump and hangs.
I don't always get the same error messages. Sometimes, I see:
"dialog not found"
Rarely, I see another error message, also repeated endlessly,
(Long error message containing the string "# of fd's.")
====================================================
The system has in it:
Intel Pentium 120 MHz
48 MByte RAM (not EDO)
2 Western Digital EIDE's
Adaptec 2940 wide
1 Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM
1 Quantum 1.2 (1.6?) MByte SCSI
1 3c590
1 Jaz drive
====================================================
I thought for sure that I had Debian Linux going on this system a week or
so ago, but now I can't remember what I did. I also can't remember how
I partitioned the drives, which is why I was trying to bring the boot/root
floppy up again (I just wanted to use cfdisk).
BTW, the root floppy itself seems to be OK, as far as I can tell.
I mounted it on another Debian Linux system here with -t minix, and the
contents look just fine.
This is the weirdest problem I've seen with Linux so far. Does anyone
have any ideas what might be causing it?
Susan Kleinmann
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
