> From: news [mailto:n...@ger.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Stefan Monnier > Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 7:58 PM > Subject: Re: lenny on x86 > > Then I guess my recommendation would be: > - use your Etch floppys to install an simple Debian system. > - using this system, use a USB key to transfer the hd-install data for > Lenny onto the drive > - boot&install Lenny. > Does that sound feasible?
Hello all! Thanks for the suggestions! Here is where I am at. I have the one laptop that I have been working with, but until last night I had not looked into detail at the others. So last night I goofed around with the various others. Several of them had problems (bad screens, busted motherboards, keyboard with stuck keys, ect). So I part swapped until I have 2 laptops that appear to work really well, and one that has a busted mouse (not a big deal to me). I also made the discovery that one of the laptops that all the hardware appears to work on, is a different model and it has 98 on it! Sadly, this one doesn't have a lan connection, nor wireless, nor a USB port, nor a CDRom drive. Just a floppy, a parallel port, serial port, and a PCMCIA slot. I do have a wireless PCMCIA adapter that works, so I spent last night splitting drivers and other files to fit on a floppy to copy over to it. If I can get 98 on the internet then I should be able to use the earlier suggestion of www.goodbye-microsoft.com. On the good system that has a USB port, I tried Celejar's suggestion for the Smart Boot Manager on a floppy. So I put Debian Live on the USB drive and tested that it worked on another machine. However, SBM refuses to see the USB drive. I do have a question that came up from last night. Since I was taking all these laptops apart and doing a bit of mix/match to get things like a good screen paired with a good MB and a working keyboard, I figured I might as well install to one of the hard drives that I had pulled out. So I fired up my old p2 400mhz desktop that was in the depths of the closet (best match I have to the old Pentium line), plugged the drive in via a USB adapter, and installed Lenny to the drive. Everything worked as far as I could tell. It booted at least. So then I plugged the drive into the laptop, reassembled, and on boot up I get a GRUB message that just sticks there. After thinking about it, I never updated GRUB. The install system probably installed it as SDx and in the laptop it probably just shows up as HDx. I was thinking I would take the laptop apart again and try to fix my error. It is a PITA to take them apart, but after doing it so many times last night I think I have it down. Besides, the mouse is already busted so not a big deal if I break something else, right? So my questions are what suggestions do you guys have? Are GRUB and fstab the only things I need to update? Installing i386 with the 2.6 kernel to a P2 shouldn't have problems transferring to a Pentium, correct? Is there a better kernel I should install? What are the chances that something like this http://main.gnulabs.org/?q=node/3 will work? Thanks for the help guys! ~Stack~ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
