New Debian Install - HELP!

[Steve Holmes]

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Well for now, I have lilo installed but for some reason, it doesn't
work right either.  In the mean time, I booted with my slackware cd,
got into a shell and am trying to run lilo with a chroot to update the
lilo.conf file.  But now I get a faital error about raid_setup.  god
knows what's going on here.  What does raid_setup got to do with lilo?
I haven't knowingly installed any raid.  The difference here is I'm
trying to set up a boot sector on /dev/hda (MBR), Windows runs on
/dev/hda1 and I have Debian installed on /dev/hdb (1 and 2).  System
files and all are in /dev/hdb1.  

Bottom line: I can't seem to get a decent boot sector built on the MBR
of /dev/hda so I can't boot into either system on that machine now.

If I want to update things in Debian, is there an easier way other
than starting over every time? When I use the boot disk from Deb, I
always end up in the setup script and am forced to redo all the
partitions.  there's got to be any easier way to do this.  Am I
missing something here?

On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 04:50:56PM +0800, Kerry Hoath wrote:
> Basically the reason grub won't do what you want right now is because you 
> are not used to it.
> Lilo hard codes the boot locations of the kernel and initial ram disk into a 
> block list which breaks every time you rebuild an initrd or recompile or 
> move the kernel.
> Grub can read file systems, and you can fix it when the boot loader 
> scrambles unlike lilo which just goes
> lililililililililili
> 
> 
> You can put lilo on and move to grub once you know how to make it go beep, 
> how to make it spit its output through a serial port etc if you so choose.
> 
> you probably wanted the options
> speakup_synth=xxxxx debconf/priority=low
> so it would ask you which boot loader to install; alternatively set the 
> priority to low on the main menu.
> Regards, Kerry.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Steve Holmes" <steve at holmesgrown.com>
> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 4:42 PM
> Subject: Re: New Debian Install - HELP!
> 
> 
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> 
> Yeah, I got past that now.  I did it by pressing down arrow once
> followed by tab and then typed speakup.synth=spkout.  That part
> worked.  I am having a hang-up right now as grub is the default loader
> and after the install finished, I was forced to reboot.  First of all,
> I don't know how to interract with grub and over-ride kernel
> parameters; but worse yet, my machine at the moment won't boot into
> anything!!!.  I have an existing windows partition on the first disk
> and am I'm installing linux on the second disk.  Apparently, grub did
> not configure this properly.  It's like windows is trying to boot
> strait away and grub never comes up at all.  I'm now sitting here
> waiting to errase the entire linux partition so I can start over with
> Debian and maybe I can get the thing to skip grub and install lilo
> instead.  I know lilo from my Slackware days and I know it is capable
> of booting on one drive and dual booting for both windows and linux.
> Plus I can make lilo talk at the beginning.  Grub looks to o
> convoluted to me as a first impression.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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