Replacing Ubuntu with Debian Etch

Hello:
I recently purchased a laptop from Linux Certified
of Sunnyvale California.
The Linux Certified model, if anyone is familiar
is LC2430S with Intel dual core. The manufacturer
Is Compal Information Technology and lists its
model # as HL90

I do not like the installation of Ubuntu that came
with the machine and want to switch to Debian Etch 4.0 r1
(for AMD64). This machine has dual core Intel
processor but as far as I can see the commercial
packaged Debian distro I have will work on it.

The First problem:
I insert the Debian install disc 1 and reboot
setting CMOS to boot from cd rom (DVD/CD/RW).
All goes well until after setting the language and
time zone, etc. Then the cdrom drive cannot be
detected. It asks me to specify the driver to look
for and in one screen I can do ls /dev and pick
the one that represent the cdrom.
The problem is that scroll lock does not work
as it should, so I cannot see all of the output.

I rebooted into Ubuntu and found the cdrom
device to be sr0 and in in /dev it is listed
as a link to scd0. But that is Ubuntu, not
the Debian installer. The Ubuntu system
would not be available so I do not know if
the same designation applies.

The odd academic question is:
How is it that the installer cannot detect the
cdrom when it is running off the cdrom?

Thank you for info, advice, etc
Jeff K


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On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 09:47 -0800, jeffry killen wrote:
> Hello:
> I recently purchased a laptop from Linux Certified
> of Sunnyvale California.

> I [..] want to switch to Debian Etch 4.0 r1
> (for AMD64)

> The First problem:
> I insert the Debian install disc 1 and reboot
> setting CMOS to boot from cd rom (DVD/CD/RW).
> All goes well until after setting the language and
> time zone, etc. Then the cdrom drive cannot be
> detected.

A lot of new hardware and chipset was released to market since Debian
Etch was published 20 month ago. The drivers for new chipset are not
included in Etch 4.0r1.
You have two solution:
1. use "Etch-and-a-half" CD, which has an updated kernel (and
other hardware related update).
http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/debian-installer/etchnhalf

or [If that doen't work either]

2. Install DebianTesting (Lenny). It is going to be released "soon" and
you will automatically get/download the bug-fixed version of the
packages.

> The odd academic question is:
> How is it that the installer cannot detect the
> cdrom when it is running off the cdrom?

That's actually an easy one: When the CD is booted, the bootloader use
the BIOS to read two important file into RAM (a kernel, and a ramdisk
image).
The kernel is then booted. It can start the core of Debian-Installer,
which is in the ramdisk, but at some point, it needs to fetch some extra
Debian-installer modules on the CDROM.
But now, the kernel is booted ant it uses it's own driver to access the
hardware (i.e the disk).
So it the kernel don't support you disk controller, you can't get beyond
that point.

Franklin


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