Here cometh the raven
Nov. 22nd, 2007 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenAfter much deliberation, I have decided to call my new computer "raven", because it's black, and because of the combination of wisdom and ill-luck that ravens symbolize. Hopefully it shall become a wise and swift machine, and not a bird of ill-omen.
So, last night, I tried to get it working.
Good: I transferred the SCSI card from the old machine (colbrand) to the new machine (raven).
Good: colbrand booted
Good: raven booted
Good: raven recognised the DVD drive
Good: raven recognised the SCSI card
Bad: raven could not find the internal hard drive (a SiS SATA drive)
Good: raven did find the external USB drive
Bad: which I consequently reformatted, thinking that it was the internal hard drive (oh dear), thus wiping out all my backups (oh no)
Good: I disconnected the external USB drive, reconnected it to colbrand, and immediately did a backup, which worked. So at least I have a current backup, even if I lost all the previous ones.
Bad: rebooting and checking bios did not explain why no internal HDD. The bios knew about the drive, but GenToo didn't.
Since it *had* recognised the external USB drive, I wondered whether I should buy another external USB drive, and use that as my main HDD.
But it was late, so I had to go to bed. I continued in the morning.
Bad: still mystified about lack of HDD recognition
Bad: raven did not recognise my network card
Good: I had an old netgear natsemi network card lying around, which I installed on raven
Good: while I was poking around raven's innards, it occurred to me that perhaps I could buy an internal IDE drive and install that -- there was room for it.
Bad: raven did not recognise the netgear network card -- or, at least, yes, it detected it, and yes, the module for it was loaded, but it said that both eth0 and eth1 did not exist (scratches head)
Bad: there has been an evil kernel error message on every boot, which I cannot decipher, and don't know what's causing it, but it is not a good sign.
Good: I changed the bios settings for the sata drive, and now raven recognises it! Hooray!
Bad: still getting evil kernel error message
Bad: still no network
Good: started the networkless install from the CD. Left for work.
Which leaves... the Mystery of the Network Card.
Absolutely have to have the ethernet working.
Plan of attack:
1. doublecheck that the ethernet cable is connected properly between raven and the router
2. log in to the router from my laptop and do a cable test
3. build a new kernel (in case the evil kernel error message has something to do with the problem)
4. rebuild the new kernel with different options (if the first try didn't work)
5. build a newer kernel by copying the kernel sources tarball onto a USB stick and transferring it to raven that way
(later)
Network card is working!
Ye olde reliable netgear natsemi pulled through!
What happened:
First, while I was on my way to work, I considered that it might be a good idea to get another external USB drive, just to have a "my files" drive that was actually quite big, and that I could easily transfer, and so that I could use the whole of the internal drive for the O/S, instead of wondering if I'd left enough space for it. So, at lunchtime, I bought myself an external USB HDD. I ended up getting a 160G one, which is small by today's standards, but plenty big enough for me. I actually decided to split it into two partitions, one with ext3 and the other with reiserfs, to try to have my cake and eat it too. (Yes, I did not create a FAT32 partition, which just shows how I really really don't expect to be interacting with MS-Windows systems anytime soon).
As a result of this, when I got home, I started re-doing the install, so that I could repartition raven's internal HDD so that the main partition took up most of the disk, rather than half of it.
Then my biblestudy folks arrived, but I continued after they left. (I am up too late!)
Again, the installer failed to set up the networking. Fine, I just continued without it.
Then I rebooted. Held my breath and...
Evil kernel error message!
Hanging!
Oh noes!
But as I was about to despair, the boot continued.
And there was an interesting error message: it tried to start eth0, and failed, because there were no dhcp client programs installed.
In-ter-es-ting.
So I configured eth0 by hand, with a static IP address, restarted it, and lo and behold, we have networking!
Then I configured the SSH daemon, and ssh'ed into raven, successfully!
We are beginning to be cooking with gas. There is much still to do. Much, much. But it is very late and I should be in bed asleep.
So, last night, I tried to get it working.
Good: I transferred the SCSI card from the old machine (colbrand) to the new machine (raven).
Good: colbrand booted
Good: raven booted
Good: raven recognised the DVD drive
Good: raven recognised the SCSI card
Bad: raven could not find the internal hard drive (a SiS SATA drive)
Good: raven did find the external USB drive
Bad: which I consequently reformatted, thinking that it was the internal hard drive (oh dear), thus wiping out all my backups (oh no)
Good: I disconnected the external USB drive, reconnected it to colbrand, and immediately did a backup, which worked. So at least I have a current backup, even if I lost all the previous ones.
Bad: rebooting and checking bios did not explain why no internal HDD. The bios knew about the drive, but GenToo didn't.
Since it *had* recognised the external USB drive, I wondered whether I should buy another external USB drive, and use that as my main HDD.
But it was late, so I had to go to bed. I continued in the morning.
Bad: still mystified about lack of HDD recognition
Bad: raven did not recognise my network card
Good: I had an old netgear natsemi network card lying around, which I installed on raven
Good: while I was poking around raven's innards, it occurred to me that perhaps I could buy an internal IDE drive and install that -- there was room for it.
Bad: raven did not recognise the netgear network card -- or, at least, yes, it detected it, and yes, the module for it was loaded, but it said that both eth0 and eth1 did not exist (scratches head)
Bad: there has been an evil kernel error message on every boot, which I cannot decipher, and don't know what's causing it, but it is not a good sign.
Good: I changed the bios settings for the sata drive, and now raven recognises it! Hooray!
Bad: still getting evil kernel error message
Bad: still no network
Good: started the networkless install from the CD. Left for work.
Which leaves... the Mystery of the Network Card.
Absolutely have to have the ethernet working.
Plan of attack:
1. doublecheck that the ethernet cable is connected properly between raven and the router
2. log in to the router from my laptop and do a cable test
3. build a new kernel (in case the evil kernel error message has something to do with the problem)
4. rebuild the new kernel with different options (if the first try didn't work)
5. build a newer kernel by copying the kernel sources tarball onto a USB stick and transferring it to raven that way
(later)
Network card is working!
Ye olde reliable netgear natsemi pulled through!
What happened:
First, while I was on my way to work, I considered that it might be a good idea to get another external USB drive, just to have a "my files" drive that was actually quite big, and that I could easily transfer, and so that I could use the whole of the internal drive for the O/S, instead of wondering if I'd left enough space for it. So, at lunchtime, I bought myself an external USB HDD. I ended up getting a 160G one, which is small by today's standards, but plenty big enough for me. I actually decided to split it into two partitions, one with ext3 and the other with reiserfs, to try to have my cake and eat it too. (Yes, I did not create a FAT32 partition, which just shows how I really really don't expect to be interacting with MS-Windows systems anytime soon).
As a result of this, when I got home, I started re-doing the install, so that I could repartition raven's internal HDD so that the main partition took up most of the disk, rather than half of it.
Then my biblestudy folks arrived, but I continued after they left. (I am up too late!)
Again, the installer failed to set up the networking. Fine, I just continued without it.
Then I rebooted. Held my breath and...
Evil kernel error message!
Hanging!
Oh noes!
But as I was about to despair, the boot continued.
And there was an interesting error message: it tried to start eth0, and failed, because there were no dhcp client programs installed.
In-ter-es-ting.
So I configured eth0 by hand, with a static IP address, restarted it, and lo and behold, we have networking!
Then I configured the SSH daemon, and ssh'ed into raven, successfully!
We are beginning to be cooking with gas. There is much still to do. Much, much. But it is very late and I should be in bed asleep.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 09:46 pm (UTC)I'm glad you're getting things to work, I only understood 50% of what you said, and that was the words like biblestudy folks arrived and wiping out all my backups (oh no)
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 01:01 am (UTC)