Debian sarge install weirdness

[Deborah Norling]

I wonder if anyone has thoughts about this situation.

I am using the speakup-enabled Sarge iso from Shane's site. I've used this
CD to successfully install Debian on a variety of computers.

But the current problem is a laptop that has a PCMCIA floppy and a PCMCIA
CD-rom. It can't boot any distro's install floppies, because though its BIOS
boots the first one fine,  Linux, and not the bios is in control when
prompting the user to insert the second floppy which is usually a root disk.
And Linux doesn't support this laptop's quirky floppy drive.

It can't load the install from CD-ROM because it can't boot from the CD-rom.

So I was able to put the kernel, vmlinuz, from the speakup subdirectory on
to a DOS partition. I also put the corresponding initrd there as well. Then
I copied loadlin to the same partition and created this batch file to boot
the install from DOS:

loadlin vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz append root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=17000
devfs=mount,dall vga=normal speakup_synth=bns

That actually worked. I had to tweak the batch file several times, but the
line above did the trick. The kernel booted, the initrd was loaded, speakup
spoke and the install talked all the way through.

One problem was that even though the debian installer docs claim that a
component called Isoseek will locate an iso image on the hard disk to
install from, it didn't run. The installer never called it. But after all
the PCMCIA drivers loaded, the installer could auto-detect my CD-rom and
pull the remaining components it needed from there.

The installer docs also claim that you can use the net boot  or the hard
disk install images, which are a kernel with their corresponding initrd.gz
files,  and not need a CD-ROM. But only the net install image appears to
have been speakup-modified, and it appears not to run isoseek. The Net boot
and the net install images are different, and the hard disk install image is
yet a different kernel and initrd combo. So I couldn't see a way around
that. I do wish speakup was better integrated in to all the install images
for Sarge. 

Nevertheless it did auto-detect my PCMCIA cd-rom and it did talk all the way
through partitioning and setting up the network. It then loaded the base
system and was ready to reboot.

But after the install re-booted, it had somehow loaded a non-speaking
kernel. My husband reading the screen confirmed  that it is booting fine,
and the base-config menu that is run at first boot appears. I can go into
other consoles and log on as root and issue shell commands.

But Debian isn't configured yet, only the base system packages are
installed. And it appears to have used some other kernel other than the
talking one I installed with. The installer usually picks the speakup kernel
and boots up talking, but this time it was in "low memory mode" so perhaps
that means it thinks it should default to a different kernel.

I thought that when I booted, I could simply type
	console=ttyS0
At the boot prompt and use my BNS as a terminal to finish up the base-config
steps. If that had worked I could have then used apt-get to download and
install the speakup-enabled kernel.
But "console=ttyS0" doesn't work either.

Does anyone have ideas about how I can access the system to finish
configuring it? Remember, I can't boot a rescue disk because its floppy
drive isn't supported under Linux. And I also cannot ssh, telnet nor even
ftp to it yet because those daemons aren't yet running. Does anyone know why
"console=ttyS0" would not work at the boot prompt?

--Debee

* The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has
occurred.