raman narasimhan wrote:
> i study in an engg. college student and recently our department
> (computer science and engineering) decided to switch from WINDOWS to
> LINUX.. A few of us formed linux awareness group and since i was
> already a linux user i volunteered to help... we chose DEBIAN as our
> OS.. we downloaded the debian binary dvds from the debian.org
> <http://debian.org> website.. made copies and distributed it amongst
> our friends who needed it..
> we encountered a few problems while installation:
>
> 1. installation was successful on a system but on re-boot after
> installation it showed *gdm failed. X-server errror. Screen not
> found*. cant access gnome desktop.
This generally means X is not properly configured for the video card.
Try editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and changing the video driver from
whatever it is (nv? ati? other?) to "vesa". Once you've saved the file,
try restarting gdm ("/etc/init.d/gdm restart"). If that works, you know
you'll need to tinker with your video settings to get it right. (Setting
up X's video settings is still a lot harder than it needs to be,
unfortunately.)
> 2. installation was successful on a system. but on re-start it showed
> "*GRUB LOADER ERROR*". unable to access both windows and debian on it
I'd try reinstalling grub. Boot from a LiveCD (Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc --
do the Debian installation DVDs function as a LiveCD?) and from a
terminal issue the command "grub-install" (or is it "install-grub"? or
other? I forget). Other than that attempt, I'm afraid I'd next turn to
Google or this list's archives, or ask more pointedly, with a specific
subject line about "grub loader error".
> 3. this happened to a friend of mine.. he installed debian.. but on
> boot-up his screen showed the following box
> ..........................................
> | Hz ? |
> ........................................
>
> this box was moving to and fro on the screen...(i think it's due to
> some resolution mismatch)
Does this happen immediately on power-up? After the lilo/grub prompt has
passed? During the basic boot up? After the machine should be running X?
I'm guessing it's happening after X tries starting. In that case, try
pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1, which should drop you to the text-based virtual
terminal number one, where you can start working on making repairs to
the X resolution (see caveat about X being hard to configure in #1 above).
> also files from his *system32 got corrupt*!!!! how come??? poor guy
> couldn't accesss windows or linux
> he got fed up and reinstalled xp!!!
About the only way this could happen is if the Windows partition were
shrunk during the install and something went wrong in that process,
especially if Windows had not been defragged first. Playing with
partitions is always dangerous and warrants a good backup before doing so.
No other part of the install should have corrupted "system32"; it could
have corrupted the initial boot process, but not the "system32"
"process". At least not in normal space-time as I'm cognizant of things.
But honestly, knowing the fragility of Windows (I'm a tech support
person, and I KNOW the fragility of Windows), I tend to suspect that
Windows just happened to choose this moment to cough up blood, and it's
only a coincidence, which unfortunately, makes Debian look bad.
> 4. two of my friends have wipro laptops that are supposed to be linux
> compatible.. the installer couldn't identify the hard disk itself...
> they told me it was SATA so i tried all the SATA options in VGUI
> mode..(normal mode was not supported dont know Y!! ) but was of no
> use!!! cant create partitions if hard disk is not detected...
I had the hardest time installing any Linux on a specific Dell model
once (don't recall the model now); I eventually had to install from an
external USB drive before the internal drive would be recognized. It was
the craziest thing! Really generated a negative impression of Dell in my
mind, even though I've had very little trouble with the many various
models of Dells I've used before.
I'm unsure if you're making a report on your experiences, or asking for
help. If the latter, you'll probably get better responses if you break
the issues up into separate emails with meaningful subject lines.
--
Kent
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