Janeks random writings » Debian http://www.hellqvist.com/janek/weblog No, it's not another diary. Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:45:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Debian 3.1 on a HP Proliant DL140 http://www.hellqvist.com/janek/weblog/2005/09/25/debian-31-on-a-hp-proliant-dl140/ http://www.hellqvist.com/janek/weblog/2005/09/25/debian-31-on-a-hp-proliant-dl140/#comments Sun, 25 Sep 2005 13:15:10 +0000 Janek http://hellqvist.com/janek/weblog/2005/09/25/debian-31-on-a-hp-proliant-dl140/ Installing Debian 3.1 (aka sarge) on a brand new HP Proliant DL140 1U server proved to be pretty complicated, mostly due to issues with the SATA drive.

Installing from a temporarily connected CDROM drive worked (no internal optical drive in the DL140, just space for a slimline drive), but after I removed the drive and rebooted I got a “kernel panic” message. Seems like Grub didn’t enumerate the drives in the same way as when the CDROM was connected.

A known problem with the Debian installer also made installing from CD difficult – the CDROM drive and the SATA disc became mutually exclusive! The solution was NOT to load the ata_piix and piix modules until needed.

My next approach was PXE booting (installing from the network without physical install media) the machine. The easiest way to get that running was ironically to use a Windows-based TFTP server (tftpd32) and then configure the DHCP server (dnsmasq). Booting off PXE worked, but the install image didn’t seem to contain the required SATA drivers, so the installer never found the SATA drive.

I managed to do a successful install using kernel 2.4.27 instead of 2.6.8, but upgrading the kernel to 2.6.8 after installing made the system unbootable again (kernel panic). I wasn’t satisified with using 2.4 and decided to try another way that didn’t require a time-consuming (well, for me anyway!) manual kernel recompilation…

The final solution was to create a bootable USB stick with Debian installer on it and install from it… Using “expert26″ I disabled the piix modules and voilá – the installer found my SATA drive!

]]> http://www.hellqvist.com/janek/weblog/2005/09/25/debian-31-on-a-hp-proliant-dl140/feed/ 0 Quick-starting Knoppix in (Windows) rescue mode http://www.hellqvist.com/janek/weblog/2005/08/10/remotely-accessing-windows-drives-in-knoppix/ http://www.hellqvist.com/janek/weblog/2005/08/10/remotely-accessing-windows-drives-in-knoppix/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2005 19:48:12 +0000 Janek http://hellqvist.com/janek/weblog/2005/07/31/remotely-accessing-windows-drives-in-knoppix/
  • Boot knoppix
  • Open a shell prompt and enter sudo su (or start a root shell through the Knoppix menu)
  • Change the knoppix password with passwd knoppix
  • Enable networking by removing the block, rm /etc/hosts.deny, rm /etc/hosts.allow
  • Check the IP of the machine with ifconfig. If you don’t have a DHCP server on your network, you need to set an IP manually.
  • Start SSH server with /etc/init.d/ssh start
  • Enable FTP by restarting inetd: /etc/init.d/inetd restart
  • Share the windows drives by creating a dir (for example /windows) and putting soft links in that dir to /mnt/hda1, /mnt/hda2 etc
  • Then use the trick from my previous weblog post to share the dir through samba without passwords.
  • Start VNC server by installing it with apt-get install vncserver and starting it with vncserver -geometry 1024x768

    • Some hints:

  • If you started Knoppix without a mouse, you can open the KDE menu with ALT-F1.
  • I’ve found that the fastest way to backup files from a damaged HD is with rsync.
    Most tips come from the great Knoppix wiki.

    • ]]>     http://www.hellqvist.com/janek/weblog/2005/08/10/remotely-accessing-windows-drives-in-knoppix/feed/ 1