[plug] re: reinstall or rebuild

[Jon L. Miller]

I see, when he initially did the installation it (RH) asked which device did
he want his boot, he chose /dev/hdb, should he have chosen /dev/hda?

His real concerns are as follows he want to play with Gnome, and put this
system on his home network.  Seems when he installed it the first time as a
workstation he couldn't get any driver for his network card to load.  So he
thought by installing it as a server he can just select what he wants to
install, but it went south due to a misunderstanding of the manual
installation.  So now I suggested we start over by doing a workstation
installation if he does not plan to use a lot of the network components
(Apache, Squid, Sendmail, etc).  A workstation install should give us
networking (NIC configuration) set-up correct?

Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Holland [mailto:myk at golden.wattle.id.au]
Sent: Monday, 19 June 2000 11:37 AM
To: Perth Linux User Group
Subject: RE: [plug] re: reinstall or rebuild


Jon,
your replies are a bit hard to read here in plain-text. I guess Microsoft
Outlook colour or font codes it. Do you put the "jlm>" in manually?
  Would you mind setting the  "options - send - plaintext settings" to
prefix quotes with "> " or similar to make it easier for other mailreaders
please.

  Anyway, can a normal BIOS really boot from hdb ? It probably depends
what you mean by boot, and which BIOS you have. Even if the kernel can
load from hdb, you might need the lilo boot sector on hda.  But I cant see
any point in moving hardware around.

  I'm surprised to see redhat recommend an "upgrade install" to get gnome
- it would seem dangerous, and even they say "oddly enough" there.

  Yes, sounds best to have a clean start if you cant find what is wrong.
You should be able to keep the /home partiton if you have loaded user
data, but backup first of course.
   Easiest would be a workstation install, then add any missing services
you want.

On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Jon L. Miller wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Holland [mailto:myk at golden.wattle.id.au]
> Sent: Monday, 19 June 2000 9:37 AM
> To: Plug (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: [plug] re: reinstall or rebuild
>
>
> On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Jon L. Miller wrote:
>
> > first LILO shows up then the next line then it just hangs there forever.
>
> Jon,
> The usual solution is to boot from floppy, check that /etc/lilo.conf is
> correct, and re-run lilo.
>
> > Any ideal what went wrong?
>
> Maybe the re-install put the lilo boot sector in a different place, and
> removed the old kernel, so the old boot sector no longer works. Something
> like that.
>   With a Win9x/linux combination, I'd suggest telling lilo to use the MBR,
> ie /dev/hda. Wheras with NT, it may be better to use NT boot-manager on
> the MBR. But check the HOWTOs for boot, lilo, and dual-boot.
>
> jlm> the boot is on /dev/hdb
>
> > I suggested the following:
> > copy the lilo.conf file to a safe place (floppy)
> > remove the win95 drive
> > blow away the linux drive and rebuild from a fresh install.
> > copy the lilo.conf file back and reboot.
>
> I suspect that win95 is hda. Is linux on the slave or second IDE?
> Can the BIOS boot from that drive without changing the settings?
> Sounds like the hard way.
>
> jlm> Linux is the slave drive on first IDE port, it has booted from there
> and then you type either dos or let it run to get Linux.
>
> > doing an automatic install does Linux over write the win95 drive? or
will
> it
>
> It shouldnt, but be careful what options you choose at the start!
> All this depends on the distro & version.
>
> jlm> RH6.2
>
> > ask which device to put the boot partition on?  If rebuilding the drive
is
> > the best way what is the best way to blow away linux?
>
> Use Linux fdisk to delete the linux partitions. This can be done during
> the re-install normally.
>
> jlm> at this point may be the best thing to do, because he still has
> problems with installing gnome and based on the HOWTO's it suggested doing
> and upgrade or a much more involved method
>
(http://customer.support.redhat.com/rhoaprod/plsql/xxrh_know_pkg.srch2?p_id=
> 402).  So we chose the upgrade and now we have all sorts of problems, this
> is why now I suggested the re installation to start with a clean start
then
> work from there.  At least I will have some ideal as to what is on the
> system and what isn't.  mind you he want Gnome on while it is still a
server
> install.  is this done automatically or does Gnome only install during a
> workstation install?  If it's only during a workstation install then why
> does the installation miss the network component installation (didn't
> install the NIC driver)?
>
> Jon
>
>
>
>
> ciao,
>
> Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>
>                           --==--
>
>

Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>
                          --==--