Wednesday, April 27, 2005
All I want to do is install Linux …
I finally received the go-ahead to convert my workstation from Microsoft Windows to Linux (well technically, I can install Linux on another workstation and swap it out for the Windows system I'm using now, but that's just an implementation detail).
Woot!
But I've been at this for five hours now and I've yet to even start installing Linux.
Boo!
First, I had to copy any important data off the machines (mine, and the
current Windows system I will be installing Linux on). At first, I thought
I could mount the office file server (which Smirk had finally finished
setting up) but after spending almost an hour trying to get my machine to
see that machine we gave up and used tar and scp
(we have Cygwin
installed on all the Windows systems here). Of course the machine I'll be
using had a 10Mb network card which meant
it took a long time to copy all the data to another computer.
Then it was time to install. The nearest distribution CDs available were for CentOS, a Linux distribution based off Red Hat's Fedora Core. P has it on his workstation, and at this point, I'm not particularly picky about my Linux distributions, just that can use one. So after swapping the network card for a 100Mb one, I put the CD in, and power up.
The Linux kernel is loaded, but that's it.
For about fifteen minutes.
Until I realize that P mentioned that he had made a CentOS boot disk that uses a serial console, not the video console.
Well then …
I found some Fedore Core 2 disks and boot that. It loads, but as it's loading up, I realize that I'm missing CD #2.
Okay, I can burn a CD while that's loading. Smirk has the disk images on his computer, so it's a simple matter of burning disc #2.
Ha ha, only if it were so easy.
I probably wasted close to another hour trying to figure out how to burn
a CD on his computer. Which is running Windows. All I wanted to do was
burn a file, which is a bit-for-bit image of a CD onto a blank CD. Under Unix, it's dd if=diskimage.iso
of=/dev/cdrom. Under Windows … it's … a XXXXXXX nightmare. I “burned” three copies before I
realized they weren't actually burned—the software just “simulated” the
“burn” (only I didn't “notice” the “scare quotes” when it “burned”
the “disk”). By then I noticed that the install program had just …
stopped.
Bad CD?
Bad hardware?
The spectre of Bill Gates?
Hard to tell, but I decided to assume the CD was bad and burn a new disc #1, just as soon as I could figure out how to burn a disc on Smirk's computer.
I called Smirk, and he walked me though the process.
Only the computer refused to boot from the burned discs.
I then stepped the burn speed down and attempted another time.
I then stepped the burn speed down yet again to the slowest setting (4x) and am now waiting for the current burn to finish. If that doesn't work, I'll burn effigies of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and try again tomorrow.
Oooh! CD is finally done burning. Gotta go …
