[ltp] insalling Linux on old thinkpads...

[Chris Schumann]

I've installed on my 750P. NFS and FTP installs both failed. I had to use
HTTP. Give that a try before you buy anything.

On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, Vasanth Rakasi wrote:

> I am trying to install RedHat Linux 6.1 on old,
> Pentium-based IBM thinkpads--models 365E and 755CX.
> Niether of these has a a CD-ROM drive. Both of them,
> however, have floppy disk drives. The hard disk space
> on both the ThinkPads is 540MB and and is wiped clean
> with Partition Magic. Each of them has 8MB RAM.
> 
> I am trying the installation through nfs, running on
> another desktop PC (which has a CD-ROM drive and)
> running RedHat Linux 6.1. I am able to connect the
> ThinkPads to the network using an NE2000 compatible
> PCMCIA card. 
> 
> I'm  using RedHat 6.1's pcmcia.img and
> gdth-driver-disk.img which I got from RedHat's site
> and used rawrite.exe to copy on to floppy diskettes.
> With the help of these two ".img" files, I'm able to
> get to the point where I need to select an
> installation method--NFS.
> 
> (at this point, when I ping this machine from another
> machine, I do get a response--showing that the network
> card is working OK. I can hear the spinning of CD-ROM
> on the desktop PC in response to the installation on
> the thinkpads.)
> 
> Installation, however, fails with the following error
> (let's call it error_1):
> -------------------
> install exited abnormally -- received signal 7
> sending termination signals...done
> sending kill signals...done
> unmounting filesystems...
>                 /mnt/source
>                 /dev/pts
>                 /proc
> you may safely reboot your system
> -------------------
> 
> When I try to get to "bash#" during the installation
> procedure (by temporarily not answering the questions
> asked by the installaion program), I tried "fdisk
> /dev/hda", "fdisk /dev/sda" and "fdisk /dev/eda" only
> to see "Unable to open /dev/hda",
> "Unable to open /dev/sda", etc. 
> 
> I When I do "ls /dev", the following is what I see:
> -------------------
> console mem             ptmx    tty0    tty3    tty6  
>  ttyS1   zero
> log     null    pts     tty1    tty4    tty7    ttyS2
> md0     psaux   ram     tty2    tty5    ttyS0   ttyS3
> -------------------
> I don't see hda, sda or eda. 
> 
> Somebody on the linux thinkpad newsgroup suggested I
> use "mknod" to get "/dev/hda", "fdisk"
> to create linux and swap partitions /dev/hda1 and
> /dev/hda2 respectively. Even after I do this, I still
> get the same error (error_1 above).
> 
> Any help from you would be deeply appreciated.
> 
> vasanth
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Chris Schumann <whizkid@dwave.net>

"Wait a minute, Joe. If what you're saying is true,
then I still don't care." - Dave Nelson, News Radio

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