Hi, all... I'm trying to install a new system from a Debian 2.1 CD I have (VA Linux Debian 2.1 Install from the store shelf that has the 2.2.12 kernel on it) and I'm just running into some really weird stuff.
Well, after partitioning (about 59Gig for / and 2 x 128MB for swap partitions) and then waited 10 hours for the block tests to complete, it all looked good. Then the "moment of truth"... the reboot. The system came up with all kinds of disk issues for fsck. Lots of duplicate block warnings (can't remember exact words, but something like duplicate blocks and/or inodes, maybe?) Well, I decided to try installing again from scratch, but now, I find that cfdisk sees my disk a little less than half of the size it's supposed to be. I've spent the last several hours trying different settings in my BIOS for cyl/hd/sec values and even using the values found by the autodetect (which I used the first time, anyway). When the kernel on the installation CD boots, it lists the disk geometry correctly for the LBA values of the disk, but those values are not believed to be accurate for cfdisk. It lists fewer cylinders and when I change it, I'm told that the value is too high for my disk. I've been trying to create a 6 Gig partition for / and 2 x 128 MB partitions for swap, and leave the remaining 55 Gig open for future expansion (to keep things running faster for now, since the huge disk takes so long to do anything on). Of course, I didn't get any of the size errors or hassles listed above when I first attempted to install this yesterday, up until that fateful boot that made my disk look smaller to cfdisk. Here's a brief description of what I've got going: - new abit motherboard, that supports dual Pentium III's (only got 1 for now), and has 4 IDE interfaces (2 additional for ATA-100 support) - 60 Gig ATA-100 HD, connected with the required ATA/66 cable. I tried my first install with the disk connected to /dev/hde and my cdrom connected to /dev/hda, but the harddrive was not detected at all by the linux install, so I moved the hd to /dev/hda and the cdrom to /dev/hdc. i figured it would work, but I would just miss out on the ATA-100 features/speeds. (I'm keeping my HD and cdrom as master drives on separate interfaces) Did I do the right thing here? or should I try the /dev/hde interface again, but use some kind of boot parameter for the linux install to recognize that ide interface? Sorry for being so long, but I wanted to include all the info I could up front. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I already have a working Debian system; this one is supposed to be my game and file server. Thanks, in advance! -Chris
