Re: Another newbie question

[Kulwant B. <kul...@bt...>]

Hello Geert,

Many thanks for your pointer. I got the Debian installer system to run using the
following bootstrap command (after setting up my partitions using the Amiga
OS3.9 HDToolbox program): 

bootstrap --apus -k /apus/linux.bin -r /apus/root.bin root=/dev/ram nobats
60nsram video =pm2fb:mode:1024x768-60  

(if you see italics where the "/" forwardslashes should be in the above line then you need to
turn off text styles in your email program).

However, after successfully decompressing the image file and starting the
installation program where I can successfully select the language and keyboard, I cannot
specify the swap partition or initialise any partitions because the LINUX installer
program says there is a problem: 

No ext2 partitions that had not already been mounted were detected
<continue>

I suspect that this is due to my earlier mentioned question about a hard
disk with a 4096 byte sector size instead of the more usual 512 byte sector
size. 

I even tried: 

# bootstrap --apus -k /apus/linux.bin -r /apus/root.bin root=/dev/sdc1 nobats
60nsram video =pm2fb:mode:1024x768-60  

where sdc1 is the first partition on the third scsi HD on my system that I
had already setup to be my LINUX root partition with an partition type id of
0x4c4e5800. sdc2 was supposed to be the swap partition (0x53575000).  

Does LINUX only support HDs with 512 bytes per sector and if so does anyone
know of an Amiga low level format program that actually works (i.e. can
reformat a HD with 4096 bytes per sector to 512 bytes per sector?). If LINUX
can initialize a 4096 bytes per sector HD/partition then what am I doing
wrong? What do I need to do to get the installation program to detect the
partitions?  

All the other Amiga partitions (FFS) are visible under the mount menu item
but they obviously cannot be mounted until the root has been mounted.

Any help from anybody much appreciated. 

Kind regards, 

Kulwant



Re: Your e-mail (31/12/2002)

> On 31 Dec 2002, Kulwant Bhogal wrote:
>> I've got the "PowerPC installation Guide - APUS (Amiga PowerUp System)"
>> by Sven Luther <lu...@de...> v1.0 24 Feb 2000 (which I guess is a
>> little old) and I found it incomplete and somewhat lacking. 
>> e.g. it tells me to use:
>> 
>> # bootstrap --apus -k apus/linux.bin -r apus/images-1.44/root.bin
>> root=/dev/ram 
>> to launch the Debian installer system and then goes onto say: 
>> 
>>      After installation, to launch Debian, use:
>> 
>>           # bootstrap --apus -k apus/linux.bin root=/dev/sda3
>>  
>> without saying anything about how to actually carry out the
>> installation!!

> That guide tells about the APUS-specific things only. For a guide about
> the Debian part (which is the same across all architectures supported by
> Debian), check out http://www.debian.org/.

> Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

>                         Geert

> --
> Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 --
> ge...@li... 
> In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker.
> But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something
> like that.                                 -- Linus Torvalds

>