New installation error
erziggy
I have an old Windows NT machine on which I want to install Debian
5.0.1 and run as a dual boot. I purchased the Debian CDs and receive
the following message after selecting the English installation
option:
Error: Unable to open back\debian\linux
The machine has a 12GB hard drive partitioned as follows C: FAT 1.99GB
and D: NTFS 11.4GB with 128MB RAM
I cannot find anything in the documentation that the installation
requires NTFS formatting. I was hoping to be able to have a dual boot
on this machine. If that is not possible, I have no qualms about
reformatting the harddrive and installing Debian alone.
Is there any more information that could shed light on this error
message?
Thank you in advance for any assistance.
Ellen
Jean-David Beyer
> Hello,
>
> I have an old Windows NT machine on which I want to install Debian
> 5.0.1 and run as a dual boot. I purchased the Debian CDs and receive
> the following message after selecting the English installation
> option:
>
> Error: Unable to open back\debian\linux
>
> The machine has a 12GB hard drive partitioned as follows C: FAT 1.99GB
> and D: NTFS 11.4GB with 128MB RAM
>
> I cannot find anything in the documentation that the installation
> requires NTFS formatting. I was hoping to be able to have a dual boot
> on this machine. If that is not possible, I have no qualms about
> reformatting the harddrive and installing Debian alone.
If you have the disk space, you can certainly have dual boot.
>
> Is there any more information that could shed light on this error
> message?
>
> Thank you in advance for any assistance.
> Ellen
>
I never used Debian, but if is like Red Hat distributions, it would not be
using Microsoft partitions. So it would not be trying to do anything with
[C:\]back\debian\linux
What one normally does to install Linux is to put the first disk of the
distribution into the CD-ROM drive and boot the system. This will load a
small Linux system into memory and run the installation program. Very early
on, it will ask if it should wipe out your existing partitions, or create
new ones. For dual boot, you keep the existing ones and make at least two
more for Linux. Then you continue to follow the directions.
It would want to use Linux partitions (if you have any; they would not be
known by Windows), you will have to make them (you would want two; one for
swap and one for everything else) at least. Do you have space for them?
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 12:20:01 up 1 day, 23:09, 3 users, load average: 4.07, 4.04, 4.01
Marcel Bruinsma
> erziggy wrote:
>>
>> I have an old Windows NT machine on which I want to install
>> Debian 5.0.1 and run as a dual boot. I purchased the Debian
>> CDs and receive the following message after selecting the
>> English installation option:
>>
>> Error: Unable to open back\debian\linux
>>
>> The machine has a 12GB hard drive partitioned as follows
>> C: FAT 1.99GB and D: NTFS 11.4GB with 128MB RAM
>>
>> I cannot find anything in the documentation that the installation
>> requires NTFS formatting. I was hoping to be able to have a
>> dual boot on this machine. If that is not possible, I have no
>> qualms about reformatting the harddrive and installing Debian
>> alone.
>
> If you have the disk space, you can certainly have dual boot.
2 + 11 = 13, right? It seems the drive has no space left.
Perhaps, the OP wants to install debian on the windows
boot file system. I know it's possible (at least in theory)
with the opensuse distro. Presumably, it's meant as a tem-
porary solution for users who want to try linux without
having to repartition disks.
As for the error message, back\debian\linux is not a valid
linux path name; but back/debian/linux is.
philo
"erziggy" <ersie...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:80821e71-0ca0-40ed...@j20g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
Should be no problem
when you get to the Debian installation
simply delete the 11 G NTFS partition
and use the free space to create your Linux partitions
*this assumes there is no data there you need to keep*
erziggy
>
> - Show quoted text -
I don't get past the prompt for English & Normal before the error
message is displayed. If I re-format the drive then boot from the CD
I would think I could continue with the installation?
Thank you for your time.
erziggy
wrote:
>
> - Show quoted text -
Error message is typed as displayed. My belief is that the C
partition is too small i.e. the error message. Was looking for
confirmation of the idea in documentation but found none.
erziggy
> "erziggy" <ersiegfr...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>
> - Show quoted text -
Unfortunately I cannot get passed the error message. It must be that
there isn't enough space on the C partition and the drive will need to
be reformated. I was looking for confirmation in the documentation
terryc
> Error: Unable to open back\debian\linux
Hmm, interesting that no one else has posted about this problem before.
Sounds like something is faulty. Initially i thought that is might be the
CDs or the cdrom drive, but this directory structure doesn't occur on the
Debina 5 installation CD. So, I'm wondering it it is your ram.
Ram should be sufficent, provided you do not want to run gnome of kde.
which partition did you want to overwrite?
If the C drive, then you will have to be very careful what you install.
you also didn't mention the cpu.
Stefan Patric
> Hello,
>
> I have an old Windows NT machine on which I want to install Debian 5.0.1
> and run as a dual boot. I purchased the Debian CDs and receive the
> following message after selecting the English installation option:
>
> Error: Unable to open back\debian\linux
Looks to me like the machine can't open and read the disk. Are these CDs
or DVDs? And if the latter, does your NT machine have a DVD reader? A
CD reader/burner can't read DVDs.
> The machine has a 12GB hard drive partitioned as follows C: FAT 1.99GB
> and D: NTFS 11.4GB with 128MB RAM
>
> I cannot find anything in the documentation that the installation
> requires NTFS formatting. I was hoping to be able to have a dual boot
> on this machine. If that is not possible, I have no qualms about
> reformatting the harddrive and installing Debian alone.
>
> Is there any more information that could shed light on this error
> message?
>
> Thank you in advance for any assistance. Ellen
Have you tried booting the CDs on another newer machine? Could be your
NT machine's hardware being quite old is causing a problem. If you get
the same message on the new machine, then you could have a bad boot CD.
It happens.
Stef
Nico Kadel-Garcia
Nico Kadel-Garcia
>
> I have an old Windows NT machine on which I want to install Debian
> 5.0.1 and run as a dual boot. I purchased the Debian CDs and receive
> the following message after selecting the English installation
> option:
>
> Error: Unable to open back\debian\linux
>
> The machine has a 12GB hard drive partitioned as follows C: FAT 1.99GB
> and D: NTFS 11.4GB with 128MB RAM
>
> I cannot find anything in the documentation that the installation
> requires NTFS formatting. I was hoping to be able to have a dual boot
> on this machine. If that is not possible, I have no qualms about
> reformatting the harddrive and installing Debian alone.
It doesn't. That's your old Windows drives, which so far you've done
nothing to eliminate. You need to do *something* to reduce the size of
that partition to have space to install Debian, or install another
drive.
In this day and age, and the cheapness of very large ATA or SATA
drives, I'd recommend installing your Debian on the second drive.
philo
Not likely.
the CD should still boot, no matter how much or little space is avail on
the drive.
You could either have a bad ISO and you can run the md checksum
or the machine may have a hardware problem
(or possibly the H/W is too old and not supported)
Aragorn
in /comp.os.linux.setup:/
> Error message is typed as displayed. My belief is that the C
> partition is too small i.e. the error message. Was looking for
> confirmation of the idea in documentation but found none.
> Thank you for your time.
Well, I don't know what installation method you were trying to perform -
I'm not familiar with installing Debian - but like Jean-David said,
GNU/Linux will not use your Windows partitions. GNU/Linux is a genuine
UNIX-style operating system that requires its own partitions and
filesystems. Therefore your hard disk should have sufficient room for
them.
A minimum of two partitions is required, being one for the "root
filesystem" and one swap partition - Linux does not use swapfiles like
Windows does by default, although it /can/ do that if need be. The
contents of certain directories in the root directory can be physically
entrusted onto other, additional partitions, but this is not something
you would probably want to mess with if this is your first try.
You generally boot up from the first CD/DVD - any machine newer than a
Pentium will have a BIOS that supports booting off of a CD-ROM that
supports El Torito - and take it from there. Many GNU/Linux installers
have partitioning tools that allow you to resize existing Windows
partitions non-destructively, but there is a catch, i.e. you must first
boot up in Windows "safe mode" and run a complete defragmentation on
the Windows partition, followed by a scan for errors. Only after you
have completed that step should you boot up from the Debian installer
CD/DVD.
The diskspace you need depends on what you intend to install. A minimal
workstation will quickly consume some 5 GB worth of files, not
including your personal datafiles. The swap partition should be about
256-512 MB on a machine with only 128 MB RAM.
You will also be asked where to install the bootloader. Tell the
installer you want it in the master boot record of your hard disk.
Windows should normally automatically be added to it, and your Windows
partition will be readable - and for the FAT32 partition, writeable as
well - from within GNU/Linux (but not the other way around).
--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
Nico Kadel-Garcia
> Well, I don't know what installation method you were trying to perform -
> I'm not familiar with installing Debian - but like Jean-David said,
> GNU/Linux will not use your Windows partitions. GNU/Linux is a genuine
> UNIX-style operating system that requires its own partitions and
> filesystems. Therefore your hard disk should have sufficient room for
> them.
>
> A minimum of two partitions is required, being one for the "root
> filesystem" and one swap partition - Linux does not use swapfiles like
> Windows does by default, although it /can/ do that if need be. The
> contents of certain directories in the root directory can be physically
> entrusted onto other, additional partitions, but this is not something
> you would probably want to mess with if this is your first try.
A "swap" partition is no longer mandatory. It's possible to create a
bulky file, designat it swap space, and mount it as such with the
"mkswap" and "swapon" commands, but it's a bit pesky. Given the size
of most disks these days, it's easy to give a very generous amount of
swap, and at least a *little* swap became important since many Linux
filesystems now keep any spare memory occupied with disk cachine.
/boot is also no longer necessary. There used to be a limit of boot
loaders having to be within a partition contained entirely within the
first 8 Gig of disk, but that went away years ago, unless you're
engaging in file system funkiness.
> The diskspace you need depends on what you intend to install. A minimal
> workstation will quickly consume some 5 GB worth of files, not
> including your personal datafiles. The swap partition should be about
> 256-512 MB on a machine with only 128 MB RAM.
As soon as you start doing real work, such as building big software
packages or storing CD images, you'll want considerably more. Be
generous.
erziggy
Issue has been resolved. Finally booted correctly from CD and
installed Debian. However, I cannot mount the CD-ROM on the machine.
When mounting cd-rom 1 the following message is displayed: Mount:
special device /dev/hdc does not exist. And browsing the /dev shows
an empty file. Can mount and browse floppy. Tape drive not displayed
at all.
When booting the following message is displayed 0.227089 PCI:failed to
allocate mem resouce #6:1000@fd000000 for 0000:01:00.0 Cannot locate
any documentation of this error but assume that it's a driver issue.
Can anyone confirm / point me in the correct direction?
Aragorn
in /comp.os.linux.setup:/
> Issue has been resolved. Finally booted correctly from CD and
> installed Debian. However, I cannot mount the CD-ROM on the machine.
> When mounting cd-rom 1 the following message is displayed: Mount:
> special device /dev/hdc does not exist.
In recent kernels, the */dev/hd?* nomenclature has been replaced with
SCSI nomenclature, and so the device special file for the CD-ROM would
now probably be */dev/sr0* or */dev/scd0* - the distinction between the
latter two is distro-specific, as far as I know, as it depends on
the /udev/ rules. This is customizable, though.
> And browsing the /dev shows an empty file.
Newer distributions all make use of /udev,/ which uses a /tmpfs/ mounted
over */dev* by the init scripts at boot time. Previously a similar
thing existed with /devfs/ but this was proper to kernels prior to 2.6
and is no longer being maintained. /devfs/ used non-standard filenames
for the device special files and ran in kernelspace, whereas /udev/
creates the device special files via userspace tools, based upon the
information exported by the kernel to */sys,* which is now a separate
mountpoint in the root directory, as opposed to a subdirectory of
*/proc* as it used to be.
Distributions that shipped with /devfs/ typically still had the on-disk
*/dev* directory populated with device special files, but in /udev/
systems this is most often no longer the case, and thus */dev* would be
empty until /udevd/ is started by the init scripts. /udev/ can then
populate */dev* in two ways, i.e. either by total autodetection for all
hardware or by untarring an archive of device special files of which it
is generally assumed that they are needed on every system and only
creating the extra device special files as more hardware is detected
and/or hotplugged into the system. Likewise, hardware that is removed
from the system through hot-unplugging gets its device special files
removed.
In my humble opinion, /udev/ is mainly an effort to make GNU/Linux look
more like Windows, and in the process, it then also comes with all the
same kinds of Windows-like quirks. Officially, /udev/ was developed to
avoid the clutter of device special files typically found in on-disk
*/dev* filesystems and to facilitate hotplugging and hot-unplugging.
> Can mount and browse floppy. Tape drive not displayed at all.
That might be a matter of loading the correct driver for that device. I
don't really have any experience with tapedrives, though.
> When booting the following message is displayed 0.227089 PCI:failed to
> allocate mem resouce #6:1000@fd000000 for 0000:01:00.0 Cannot locate
> any documentation of this error but assume that it's a driver issue.
> Can anyone confirm / point me in the correct direction?
Hmm... Taking a wild guess here, but I presume this has to do with
certain settings in the BIOS, preventing read access, write access or
perhaps both to a given region of memory. Something to do with caching
perhaps?