Trying to install debian 5.01
 

Hello everyone, this is my first post, and my first question on this forum as well.

Anyway .. I have been unable to install debian 5.01 x64.

Short version:

For every installation attempt, "/boot" is empty and has no files within.
No kernel image to load from.
How do I re-install kernel images from rescue mode ?



Full version:
I tried a total of 5 installations

1st installation:
"/boot" has everything except "menu.lst"
grub not installed into MBR.

so I used rescue mode to install grub into MBR.
gets into grub command due to missing "menu.lst"
I was lazy to find "menu.lst" and copy over, so I reinstalled everything.


2nd ~ 5th installtion:
"/boot" is totally empty, no vmlinuz img files, no menu.lst, no grub folder
(and I was beginning to doubt the grub was only installed because I did it from rescue mode.)


PS. for all installations, I did re-format the partition every time.
I tried to re-burn the DVD img. DVD img hash was correct.
The partition was one primary of 250MB with ext2 for "/boot"
and the "/" in 30GB logical in XFS format

there's also a weird thing I don't quite get, (might be due to motherboard)
when in rescue mode, the hard drive I'm installing into is (hd3)
but when just booted up, in grub's command interface, it's actually (hd0)
(it's supposed to be hd3, not sure why right after boot, grub had it as hd0)

You stated that you are installing on hd3 so you have 4 drives.
Or do mean that you're installing on (hd0,3)
Where did you install GRUB during install ?
And if you have 4 drives what kind SATA OR PATA ,
Or SATA emulating PATA

yes .. I have 4 drives
and I meant (hd3)

grub is installed in rescue mode with something like grub-install /dev/sdc

and for that hard drive
(hd3,0) is for windows vista, and somehow windows created a "extended" partition as (hd3,1)
so, my "/boot" is a ext2 on (hd3,2) and main system root "/" on /dev/sdc7 (which is (hd3,6))

I don't quite remember how many had drives / type on I have on them
but it's either 3 SATA .... or 3 SATA + 1 PATA

and the drive I install to is a SATA on physical SATA channel 3 I think (or similar)

the install seemed to install things in "/" (hd3,6) correctly (at least the folders are there)
just that somehow "/boot"(hd3,2) never got its stuff

and like I said , a bit weird that ....
in grub, it catches the (hd3) as (hd0)
because I could boot into Vista with chainloading (hd0,0) directly in grub
which is supposedly (hd3,0)

What is weird my system has 3 HD sata drive and one IDE HD
But my controller is emulating IDE
IT means that (hd0,0) can be on every of my 4 drives
It only depends on which drives is selected in the BIOS as boot HD during install .
So if do not look carefully what my boot order is I can install on SDB and having GRUB on SDB and a menu.lst revering to SDA
So if the same situation applies to you what was the boot order during install and where did you install GRUB ON a partition on MBR ?
Edit the menu.lst and look what is says

Like I said ,
for all of my installation
menu.lst was not preset. not even grub's stage two files.
I had to manually configure it to make it work. (or manually copy over grub's files)
plus the vmlinuz and kernel images are all missing. (this I cannot just copy over, because I do not have the debian 5.01's kernel images)

anyway .... the grub, although installed on /dev/sdc is actually pointing (hd0,2) ....
it is actually pointing to the correct spot. and I do not need to worry about that


what I need is getting the "/boot" directory files installed (most importantly the missing vmlinuz kernel images)

I'm thinking it could be due to bad "Cd/DVD" drive ...
Because when I tried ubuntu ... it spits I/O error ...
but there was absolutely no warnings in debian

I had the similar experience with grub. Location of grub installed is always recognized as hd0, (although it was hdx, during installation) which is pretty troublesome.

You might try http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/ma.../linux-image-2 to get the kernel images and http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/ma.../linux-modules for the kernel modules