This is proving to be one of my most challenging installations yet. I just recently became the owner of an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 425CDT laptop (Pentium 100, 800MB hard drive, 24MB RAM which will eventually get upgraded to its maximum 40MB, CD-ROM drive, external floppy drive.)
Anyway, I currently have Windows 98SE working fine on it. However, I want to make it full 100% Debian (etch which would be upgraded to sid). The CD ROM drive is not bootable, so I made a set of net install floppies. After booting up with the boot floppy, I am asked for the root floppy. I put it in the drive and it starts to load. After a while, it quits with this set of messages... Setting up filesystem... mount: Could not find a spare loop device cp: /initrd/*: No such file or directory failed copying filesystem (may be out of space on ram disk) Giving up! Are there any commands or parameters I can enter at the boot prompt to prevent the above failure from occuring? If not, then would doing a minimal install on another system, and backing it up to a CD with Mondo Archive, and restoring from there to the laptop do the job? If I go that route, would it be best to use the PCMCIA NIC from the laptop during the install, or has Debian's autodetection capabilities matured enough to where that wouldn't be necessary? I do have a card reader I could stick in the other system easy enough. I even considered pulling the laptop's hard drive and sticking it in this other system with an adapter, and installing that way. However, I need to first figure out how to open the damn thing without breaking anything. So, any suggestions on how to get going here? I really don't want to have to resort to installing Damn Small Linux instead. I mean, DSL is a great lightweight distro, but I would really prefer to run "pure" Debian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
