Thanks. Did what you said and re-checked the FAQ-O-Matic. There is was, plain as day, a pointer to a set of AIC-7xxx *only* rescue and driver disks (at http://www.debian.org/~adric/aic7xxx/ if anyone is keeping score). The rescue disk worked like a charm, and allowed me to partition my HD.
On to the next problem... I partitioned the HD into a 925 MB linux partition (type 83) and an 80 MB Linux swap partition (type 82). I tried this setup because the install manual suggested as much swap space as you have memory. After partitioning I get to the "initialize and activate a swap partition", and "initialize and activate Linux Partition" steps. It correctly identitifes /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 as the Linux and swap partitions. However, it will initialize, but hangs if I try to do a bad-block scan of either partition. After establishing this fact I ignored the scan step and moved on (why does it hang? I know there are no bad blocks) After initializing and mounting /dev/sda1 as root, I come to the "Install operating system kernel and modules" step. I tell it to use the first floppy (as indicated in the readme for the aic7xxx disks), but I get a message "unable to mount the rescue floppy", then "The attemt to extract the Rescue Floppy failed". Alt-F3 (the screen with status messages) has two messages at the end: "Mount /dev/fd0 (type msdos) on /floppy: wrong filesystem type, or bad superblock on /dev/fd0" "Mount /dev/fd0 (type ext2) on /floppy: wrong filesystem type, or bad superblock on /dev/fd0" Tried making another rescue floppy with rawrite (even though the one has worked fine so far), and got the same message. Any ideas? Thanks again, Robert ----- Original Message ----- From: t.bedlam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <debian-user@lists.debian.org> Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2000 11:08 AM Subject: Re: Install problem with AHA 2940 SCSI (older PC) > On Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 04:02:49PM -0500, Robert C. Ramsdell was only > escaped alone to tell thee: > > > Adaptec 2940 SCSI Host Adapter (LUN 7) > > You need a different kernel, one with AHA-2940 SCSI support *exclusively* > and *specifically*. No other SCSI adapter drivers should be in the kernel if > they are not installed on your system. The presence of all the drivers > screws disk writes (but not reads! The install knows what kind of disks you > have, for instance, and partition sizes, so it looks doable). > > Your DOS disk cannot recognize your HD because the partition table is > trashed. I did that, too. Debian has this information on their website; you > should just remember to carefully examine the website before you do anything > rash, like installation. :) > > Go to the website, look through the FAQ-omatic and install webpages for the > AHA-2940 pre-compiled kernels. > > Alternatively, if one has a working Debian system, you can download the > kernel source, upgrade gcc, make, libs, &c. and compile a custom kernel > yourself. (Not recommended for newbies, I used Debian (and Linux/Unix in > general) for about six months before I felt comfortable doing this. > > -- > i'm determined to stand, whether god |=| [EMAIL PROTECTED] > will deliver me or not. -- bob dylan |=| www.cris.com/~bedlam > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null > >
