Trouble starting out with Debian BDI 4.51 with EMC
 

Greetings,

I am a newbie to Linux and attempting to rebuild my old tower (P233 with 1-4gb drive and 1-6gb drive) into a Linux EMC machine for a DIY Project.

From LinuxCNC.org, I downloaded the above noted distribution. After CD burning issues and cdrom hardware problems on the older computer, I was able to successfully install the distribution. At the end of the install, I received a note indicating the install was successful and instructing me to reboot the computer.

I rebooted the system and changed the boot device in bios to IDE 0 (I tried IDE 1 thru 4 later as well). I could not get the system to boot up.

I reinstalled the software and tried again. Each time I got to the reboot instructions and got no further than before.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed?



Thanks,

Brian G.

Did you, or the installer, install a bootloader? If so, use the Live CD function to access the file /boot/grub/menu.lst on the IDE disk and post it's contents here.

Live CD
 

I was the installer and kinda working in the dark. Unless the bootloader was part of the cd image that I downloaded, then no. Not sure where or what to do here.

I had to use a floppy - CD boot since my system cdrom is not adapi compatible. VIa that method I was able to boot the CD image and load Debian.

I am at the reboot stage and cannot get the system to boot up. (perrhaps I had to bootloader then??)

Putting in the CD just restarts the installation process.

any thoughts on what I might do next?

Brian G

You can do one of 2 things:
a) visit the Debian packages repository, locate the grub package for your architecture and install grub from that, or
b) get to source and d/l from http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ Install as per their instructions :)

However, during the install process, you should have gotten the question on where to install grub. Apparently you haven't. Would it be a good idea to exchange the cdrom device for a more modern design that facilitates a direct install from cdrom? You'd only need it for installation, after that you can replace it with it's current device.

after alot of research, it turns out Grub was installed and the partitions alloted by it (single boot clean wipe on install).

I rechecked all the bios settings and the IDE-0 was correct. TUrns out that the message on reboot was:

loading boot record from IDE-0..OK
| (<----blinking cursor)

And there she sat for several hours (overnight actually) and I never successfully booted up.


So something else appears to be the problem. At this point I am about to pack it in for Linux until another day and a newer machine. I will probably plop in FreeDOS and a DOS version of the control software. to get started on what I really need to be working on.

Brian G.