Turnbull China Bikeride/Turnbull China Bikeride - Disc 2.iso/BARNET/ARMLINUX/MAIL/9710/000055_owner-linux-arm…r.rutgers.edu _Wed Oct 15 13:01:39 1997.msg

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Date:     Wed, 15 Oct 1997 12:57:39 +0100 (BST)
From: Phil Norman <[e-mail]>
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To: John Lagrue <[e-mail]>
cc: Russell King - ARM Linux Admin <[e-mail]>,
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Subject: Re: Resend - Re: More questions about installing ARM Linux
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On Wed, 15 Oct 1997, John Lagrue wrote:
> Hhhmmmm.
>
> I have managed to get rather further now. If I supply the extra commands
> "hda=noprobe hdb=noprobe" to the rpc kernel at boot time then it all boots
> OK, accepts the boot floppy disc and then kicks off the RedHat
> installation. Of course at this point it all grinds to a halt because the
> Linux sources (the RPMs) are all in an X-files archive on the CDROM and I
> have now no idea of what to do with them or how to get the installation to
> read them.
>
> Any further pointers would be very gratefully accepted :-)

Here's what I did.

Firstly, you have a choice - you can keep the filenames as they are (ie
use LongFileNames), or not.  It doesn't matter.  However, following these
instructions you'll be copying large numbers of files into directories,
and LongFileNames cannot cope with more than a certain number of these.
I think possibly the limit is 32, but I've not checked.  If you're not
using long filenames, 77 is, of course, the limit.

Anyway, copy batches of RPMs into directories on your ADFS hard drive
(this is all in RiscOS so far).  You need to do this because, of course,
linux can't read x-files archives.  If you're using longfilenames, you
will then have to zip up the contents of each of these directories, since
otherwise under linux the filenames will appear as '(C)JPT__01' or
something similar.  If you're not using longfilenames, you will be able
to just copy the rpm files across in one big go.  OK - you've created all
the zip files - now get hold of some useful linux binaries (cp and unzip
are very useful) and put them on a floppy.  Don't try just leaving them
on your adfs disc, since linux will not allow you to execute anything off
the adfs drive, and you won't be able to copy the binaries from the adfs
drive to your linux drive because you won't be able to execute 'cp'.  Oh,
and 'cat file > copy_destination' will probably not work - it didn't for me.

You will also need to obtain (well, you may not need these, but I got
them just incase) the 'base' set and 'instimage' set off the ftp site.
What I did was to ftp all the binaries, and create a zip file of each.
YOu can then put these zip files on your adfs drive.

Now boot into linux, choose 'install off hard drive image', do that funky
stuff with eh supplemental disc, and then when it gets to the opint where
you have to choose what HD to install off, type 'ctrl-z'.  Now you can
mount your ext2 drive, adfs drive and floppy.  Create the directories
'RedHat' and 'RedHat/RPMS' on your ext2 hard drive.

Now cd into the RedHat directory and type:
/floppy/unzip /adfs/ARMLinux/base.zip
/floppy/unzip /adfs/ARMLinux/instim.zip

Substituting 'adfs' for the directory in which you've mounted your adfs
partition and the rest of the path as where to find the zip files.

Then enter the 'RedHat/RPMS' directory and do a similar unzip thing on
all the 'rpms-1.zip' etc files you have on your adfs partition.  If you
haven't used longfilenames, just use /floppy/cp to copy all the rpm files
from adfs to RedHat/RPMS.

Then, once you've finished putting everything on the hd, unmount the
floppy, adfs partition and ext2 partition, and type 'exit' to get back to
the main installer.  You can now tell it to install off your ext2
partition onto your ext2 partition.  Note - it is important at this stage
that you don't reformat that partition ;-)

You can probably mount your adfs partition and install off a RedHat tree
you've created in there, but do note that you will be limited to
installing 77 rpm files!

And now for the important note.  This is the method I tried to use - as
far as I can see there's nothing wrong with it.  However, I found that
after I'd created the RedHat tree, the installer had read the tree
without errors, but then it came up with the error 'could not create rpm
database'.  Please let me know if you try thisd method, and it works.

Thanks, and I hope this is of some help,
Phil


--

=============================================
= Phil Norman  -  [e-mail] =
= http://newton.ex.ac.uk/general/ug/norman  =
=    Acorn fanatic and physics student      =
=============================================