I've been trying to install DSL to the hard drive of an old laptop. I do have a Linux partition on the drive.

First I tried a frugal install, which immediately resulted in the following error message:

sfdisk: ERROR: sector 0 does not have an msdos signature
Sorry system has not detected a linux partition

After abandoning that, I attempted a regular hard drive install. This option will recognize the partition and begin the install, but when it comes to the point where I am asked if I want to install a boot loader, I type "Y", hit enter, and the installer crashes. The application just disappears from the screen, but the following error message is generated just prior:

tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
mount: relocation error: mount: undefined symbol: blkid_known_fstype
cp: cannot stat `/mnt/auto/floppy/linux24': No such file or directory

Anyone see a way to solve either of these problems?

Are you installing via CD or floppy?

The easiest way is probably to pull out the HD, put it in a USB HD enclosure, and install on a different machine (although you may need to reconfigure 'X' and also edit the Grub boot settings).

I'm attempting the install from a CD.

The idea of putting the drive in an external enclosure had crossed my mind, but I'd like to leave that as a last resort because I don't have an enclosure at my disposal and am not exactly keen on having to throw money at this project.

OK, it sounds like a broken installer script.

On a distribution like 'Debian' there is an option to temporarily dump you to a shell, or you can press [alt][F2] to get a second virtual console. See if your installer gives you those options.

In the virtual console, find out where the bootloader is stored and install it yourself. If the bootloader is 'grub' just use google to find pages on how to install it; maybe you'll even find a post on how to manually install it from DSL (or whatever distro you've settled for). Similar story for 'lilo'.

OOPS - wait a second ...
Since you've already gone through the whole install, plug in a 'Live CD' and inspect the HD to see that everything is in fact there - from the live CD you can mount the HD and install whatever bootloader you want. Personally I find 'lilo' less of a hassle although 'grub' is much more flexible if it installs properly.