Does anyone know if there's a way to make installing Mandrake from the second
hdd, hdb, work? I'm using a boot floppy created with or from the cdrom hd.img
file, but when booting with this diskette, the installation program only sees
hda.
The cdrom I have came with a planete linux magazine, april/may 2000 issue, and
the cdrom can't install, because the install program constantly tries to
install or access /mnt/usr, /mnt/var, etcetera, instead of /usr, /var,
etcetera. I tried all installation methods (Recommended, Custom, and Expert)
from the cdrom, and the "same" /mnt problem occurs each time; different
locations, but always after the actual install of the packages is begun.
Hence, I created a /Mandrake directory containing the entire cdrom on hdb (not
enough space on the 2GB hda) and inspected the perl-install scripts to try to
find the culprit and it looks like it's probably install2.pm. In the sub main
of this script, if $::testing evaluates to false, then the directory prefix to
be used is set to "/mnt". There are a few other possible scripts that could be
causing this problem, but install2.pm is the only one I found to actually
define the prefix to /mnt.
Based on this, I'ld like to do the install from the hdd, modifying the
aforementioned script(s) until the problem is resolved, but hd.img doesn't
permit access to hdb.
I contacted planete linux a few days ago, but haven't received a reply, yet.
The only options I see are to either:
a) get an installable cdrom from planete linux, which I doubt they'll want to
send; or
b) have planete linux or who ever created the hd.img file with this lousy
restriction modify this .img to allow access to hdb; or
c) create the necessary hd.img file myself (don't know how to do this, at least
not yet, and don't know if it can easily be done); or
d) try something with lilo, creating a lilo boot loader stored on the boot
floppy, but am not sure this would permit getting around not being able to use
hdb for the /Mandrake directory.
I could switch the two HDDs around, to then be able to see the filesystem the
/Mandrake directory is located on; however, I foresee some potential problems
with this approach, or at least headaches. Plus, I don't see or understand why
hd.img shouldn't allow use of hdb.
Of course, I also don't understand why the installation wouldn't have been
tested as per the real end user's world, prior to shipping the cdrom. This
isn't the first time I've encountered this kind of problem, though, and the
other time was in 1997, for a Linux distribution I paid $100 for; has never
been installable and don't even know where that piece of garbage is, now, and
may have thrown it out to the garbage, after the distributor refused to send an
installable cdrom.
Comments?
mike
