Hi! Recently I have been trying to get Debian 2.2 or 3.0 loaded onto a Dell Poweredge 1650 server. This appears to require the use of the driver disks because of the RAID controller that is built into the box (a Dell PERC3 that uses the AACRAID / PERCRAID driver).
Without this driver the OS loader sees no hard disk at all, so I can't do as many suggestions about driver disks I have come across said -- skip this part and you'll be prompted for whatever driver you need later. I have ruled out bad media. I was able to dd the driver images (bs of 512 and 1024 in case that made a difference) to floppy and then dd them back to a file and diff them with the originals. I have ruled out bad floppy drives. I have tried this with three machines. I created the images from WinNT and from RH6.2. Each time the recovery and root disks work fine but the driver disks fail to load. When attempting to load I get the error "Cannot mount the floppy. Stop". I have also tried to mount the disk from the prompt but whatever format it is in is not recognized by any mount command I have been able to construct. I've used rescue/boot/driver images direct from Debian mirrors of the 2.2 release, and the 3.0 release. I've also tried a couple of special sets that I've found that were created for the 2.2 release that specifically support the driver I am trying to load. I have tried using a boot CD (3.0.23bse) too, but every time I start the installer I get a "choose the language" prompt that just brings me back to the same page -- to choose again -- after I've chosen *any* language. Despite a suggestion I found on one web site to skip this dialog and proceed I have found no way to skip the language question. As you can see, after NUMEROUS attempts I have found that I am unable to get *any* debian driver disk working at all on any system when prompted to load driver data from a floppy (I have tried three sets of hardware!). I have no idea what is wrong but I think the answer is that either a) I am doing something wrong despite reading the documentation thoroughly or b) the driver disks do not work and all of Debian driver disks are broken. Somehow I doubt it's b... Does anyone have any advice? reb -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
