On Installing Linux
So a couple days ago my RedHat system refused to start X. None of my amateurish fiddlings with libraries and configuration files could fix the problem, and I kind of need a Linux development platform at the moment, so I tried reinstalling the system. That was a bright idea apart from the important bit where my computer overheats badly (it needs a new case with some room for those things most of us call "fans" but which eMachines, in its cost-cutting wisdom, refers to as "unnecessary") and CD-drive activity exacerbates the problem: The computer restarted itself in a fit of summertime pique partway through the installation, leaving the Linux half of my system with some definite configuration problems.
Oh well, I was looking to make a few upgrades anyway, and RedHat just appears not to be the system for upgrading and expanding as you go. I'd had Debian GNU/Linux recommended to me, and I found that they had a Net-based installation that could be booted from floppy. No CDs involved! So far things seem to have worked out very nicely -- I only had a few bumps in the reasonably user-friendly installation (though, being Linux, it's still a geeks-only kind of thing), and I'm getting along just fine with the system now that it's running.
However, I did run into a couple of problems that I thought deserved documentation on the off chance that anyone out there has the same kind of problems, in which case that person has only to go to Google and never locate this blog because it's result #1,753,492 for "debian install problems"... Okay, so it's documentation in case I ever have to do this again. Therefore, when I state things sarcastically, I'm addressing my future self who will have forgotten all these things -- and I know I will because I ran across at least one of these when I installed RedHat two years ago. The abuse is not aimed at some innocent who stumbled across this post by complete accident.
Firstly, if the floppy boot fails, odds are you have a bad diskette. This is in the Debian documentation, but it's not in an obvious location because the docs are somewhat haphazard and not well-organized. Don't spend time proving you're insane by rebooting the computer five times and waiting for the same "Boot failure" message, just go try another floppy.
Secondly, if you have, say, a Netgear GA621 gigabit ethernet card in addition to an onboard 10/100 controller: Yes, the National Semiconductor 80-whatever driver on the boot floppy is the right one. The reason DHCP doesn't work even when you give it a server name is that you have to go into your CMOS settings and disable the onboard controller. Y'know, like the guys at the computer shop told you they had to when they were installing the GA621 three years ago under WinXP.
Thirdly, if your X server doesn't start because it couldn't find your USB mouse, and your USB mouse is having its power cut off as Linux boots, check the system log in /var/log/messages. If that's full of boot-time messages that read "USB device not accepting new address," and you have an ACPI-capable system, try adding "acpi=on" to the parameters passed to the kernel from the bootloader. And check out the FAQ at Linux-USB. Do not, for instance, try disabling ACPI in the CMOS if you've a dual-boot system; Windows will no longer be your Happy Microsoft Pal, and USB and PCI still won't play nicely under Linux.
Fourthly and lastly (thank God), getting NTFS drivers in Debian doesn't require recompiling the kernel. (No, I didn't actually do that... I was just halfway through the pre-compilation configuration before this occured to me.) NTFS drivers are a kernel module. Try "insmod ntfs," and add ntfs to the boot-time modules if you want it permanently.
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