[wplug] Server install

[Arnaud Loos]

Actually the drives in the server are SCSI. I attempted the install to hda1
out of sheer desperation even though I knew it wouldn't work. When
installing grub the installation failed with a big red box stating "fatal
error". Although I'm sure Debian logs error messages during the install
process, I'm unaware of where to look for these logs. It seems as though
Eric(Thanks!) provided the answer in his previous post about this being a
documented issue at bugs.debian.org. The person who reported the issue was
using RC1 of the installer and even though I'm using RC2 it seems to be the
same problem. Apparently it only affects sarge and the 2.6 kernel. I'm going
to try a reinstall today with the 2.4 kernel and see if that fixes it. 

Should I report my problem to bugs.debian.org even though they seem to
already know about it? If I do report it, besides my specific hardware
details, are there any logs or other info I should include in the report?

Thanks.
Arnaud-

-----Original Message-----
From: wplug-bounces+arnaud=arnaudloos.com at wplug.org
[mailto:wplug-bounces+arnaud=arnaudloos.com at wplug.org] On Behalf Of John
Harrold
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 9:35 AM
To: General user list
Subject: Re: [wplug] Server install

Sometime in December Arnaud Loos assaulted the keyboard and produced:

| I find myself installing Debian on a server for the first time and I'm 
| having a problem. The server is a Dell 1650 with a perc 3/Di controller.
| Through the Adaptec config util I've setup the three disks (36 GB) as 
| a
| RAID5 set. I boot off the Debian sarge netinstall cd and get through 
| the disk partitioning (correctly recognized a 72 GB volume) and base 
| install but I'm having a problem with the grub install. I first tried 
| to install Grub to the MBR but that failed. I then tried installing to 
| /dev/hda1, /dev/sda1, /dev fd0 (windows formatted, FAT16), but all 
| these fail. I thought at least the floppy would work. Any idea what I'm
doing wrong?

Since you tried installing the grub on hda1 I'm assuming that you have an
ide drive in the machine. I've had a lot of trouble getting linux boot
loaders (lilo and grub) working on machines with both ide and scsi. I've
normally been able to get them to boot off of floppies though.

Now when you say grub failed do you mean:
 o grub install gave an error
 o gurb install worked but the machine wont boot

Assuming that it is the latter. If you installed grub to a floppy and it
didn't boot, then perhaps you are pointing to the wrong device? I'm
speculating here. Could you elaborate on the two points above and provide
any error messages.

--
---------------------------------------------------------- 
                            | /"\                         
 john harrold               | \ / ASCII ribbon campaign   
 jmh at member.fsf.org      |  X  against HTML mail       
 the most useful idiot      | / \                         
----------------------------------------------------------
 What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans,  and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is brought  under the name of totalitarianism or
the holy name of  liberty and democracy?
 --Gandhi
----------------------------------------------------------
  gpg --keyserver keys.indymedia.org --recv-key F65A739E
----------------------------------------------------------