I am about to install Linux for the first time in the next week or two, as soon as I finish backing up my old hard drive.
I received a WD 160 GB hard drive as a gift earlier this year, but have not found a chance to install it until now. I assumed I could just plug it in, but when I began reading about it I realized that my old PC (circa 2000) cannot handle IDE drives larger than 137 GB. Further reading helped me understand that buying a newer IDE controller would allow me to use the big drive. I plan a multiboot system with Windows XP (and maybe a couple of other OSes), and I have on-hand all of the drivers and docs I need to make that work. Unfortunately, I am still unclear about how to allow Debian to support the IDE controller. First, several retailers listed Debian as a distro for which there is Rocket 133SB support. But the Highpoint website itself provides no such support, except for source code for the drivers (which hopefully compiles and functions for Debian). Unfortunately, I am a newbie and have no idea (at this time) how to take advantage of those sources. Even if I did, I don't have an installed Linux with which to compile them. Second, when reading about "stable" Debian I seemed to find that the kernel doesn't quite support large LBA48 hard drives, an issue quite aside from support for the controller card. Unfortunately, I had already downloaded and burned 3.0r2 CDs of disk 1 and disk 5 (bf2.4), thinking those would be all I needed. Being a newbie, I thought sticking with "stable" would be a better idea until I become more familiar with how Linux works. After discovering the LBA48 road block, I searched around a little and found the HILUX website -- an update for "stable" with a kernel (2.4.26) which should support LBA48. It was just after I downloaded and burned that mini-CD that it occurred to me that the Rocket 133SB controller might not be supported. When I went looking for info about that, I arrived at my current state of confusion. I would rather install from CD, since I am a total newbie (with Linux) and doubt I could make my DSL connection work if it did not autodetect. But just in case, I downloaded a Sarge netinst CD a couple of weeks ago. (Since then, I have simply been finishing the backup job on the old drive before I start playing around inside the case -- I have other new hardware to install besides the Rocket controller.) If any Debian users out there have comments or advice before I begin my big experiment (I look forward to it, even if I do have lots of problems!), please speak up. I will be beginning in the next week or two -- as soon as I have a couple of days off from work after I finish backing up -- so there is still time for me to learn the right way before I learn the HARD way! TIA, Dave Witbrodt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
