From: ssarkar@alnitak.usc.edu (Subrata Sarkar) Subject: Help me install LINUX, Please Date: 25 May 1992 02:27:48 -0700
I tried installing Linux today, and ran into trouble.
I hope someone can show me the way.
0. This computer is a 386@40, with 256k cache, with Trident 8900c VGA,
4 Meg RAM and 116 Meg disk.
1. I grabbed rootimage .95a and bootimage .96a from tsx-11.
2. I rawrote them and things worked great.
3. Next, I wanted to put it on my hard disk. This is a brand new
computer and I don't mind destroying the existing DOS.
When I brought up pfdisk, it showed partition 4 as the DOS
partition. I created two new partitions 1 and 2 (these are roughly
19 Meg and the remainder). The old partition 4 refused to go away!
I just said "4 0 0 0" to pfdisk and got rid of it.
I made 1 (DOS) the active partition. Presumably everything on it has
been destroyed.
4. Some of the instructions forgot to mention this: everytime you change
the partition table, you should power off-on.
When I came back, all was well: pfdisk and fdisk both saw the new world
the way I had set it up. I also used the DOS fdisk and it shows
the partitions the way they ought to be.
The trouble is the next step: mkfs refuses to format the Linux
partition! And when I ask him to format the DOS partition, he
reports I/O errors, though he does get started.
My questions:
1) How do I get Linux safely installed on the 100 Meg (/dev/hda2)?
2) How do I get a DOS onto /dev/hda1? I know how to say "format /s" but
things look batty on c: right now. Even though I've changed the
partition table the current DOS thinks things are like they used to
be (i.e., it shows free space ~ 100 Meg even though it's on a
partition of 19 Meg).
3) The instructions really don't explain too well how to setup the
machine so it routinely boots through Linux. I might run DOS once
in a while but mostly I want Linux.
Here is some data:
The disk is type 47 in the setup (American Megatrends Bios). It has
762 cylinders, 8 heads, 39 sectors. (pfdisk insists on thinking there are
only 760 cylinders. Does that matter??).
fdisk says:
/dev/hda1 19948
/dev/hda2 98748
The L function in pfdisk says:
# ID First Last Name start, length
1 6 0 127 DOSbi 39, 39897
2 128 128 760 Minix 39936, 197496
"mkfs -c /dev/hda2 98748" produces the "Usage: " message. This happens
for both cases: active partition = 1 or 2.
"mkfs -c /dev/hda1 19948" starts formatting it!
It shows 6649 inodes,
19948 blocks,
Firstdatazone = 214 (214)
Zonesize = 1024
Maxsize = 26896692
It starts talking:
2144 ...3632 ... ... ... 18672
hard disk I/O error
dev 0301, block 19948
and repeats these two lines twice.
I'm really stuck -- all help will be most appreciated.
Thanks,
-Subrata.