[ltp] insalling Linux on old thinkpads...

[Book Man]

I had the EXACT same problem when trying to do an
NFS/FTP/HTTP install of RH6.0 on the three older 7xx
series (755cd,760ed,760xl).  The only way to get an
install was via CDROM.  Never figured out the problem.
 Was using Etherlink III and tried a Novell 10bT card
(NE2k).

Good luck.

-book

--- Vasanth Rakasi <v_rakasi@yahoo.com> 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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