Re: debian installation

["Marcel Oats" <moats@orcon.net.nz>]

Hi, here's a Marcel rather woffley message, which is a bit long.
At the risk of this question being answered already, if your new drive is 
unformatted, during the installation (before the system ejects the cd and 
reboots) you arrive at the (set up partitions) menu, or similar wording.  If 
you hit enter, you can select "automatic partitioning".  Do this, and you 
should get an option called
"use the maximum free space".  In this instance, it will be the new drive, 
which of course has nothing on it yet.  You should be able to continue on 
your own, and you also will have the chance to read the screen during the 
"warning" question, as it will tell you which drive the new partition is 
being created on; in this instance, it'd be
hdb.

After installing the base system (the next step in the installation process) 
you will be able to "install the grub boot manager".  This is the part of 
the system which allows you to choose between whether Linux or Windows 
boots.  When you hit enter, you'll get a question about installing it into 
the boot record of your first hard disk.  This is the one with Windows on 
it.  It's a good idea to do this, as it can be the first thing to load.  You 
should read the screen before hitting enter to accept Yes, and make sure 
that Windows XP is listed.  If for some reason it's not, tab to back, and 
try again.  There shouldn't be any trouble though, as it's a nice reliable 
boot manager.
When the system reboots, you'll notice that there is a delay, then Linux 
loads.  During this delay, you can press down arrow (on my system it's THREE 
times) to get to your XP, then press enter.  On here, various flavours of 
Linux are installed, such as Linux with recovery, without frame buffer etc, 
but the nice thing is that they will all speak, as the speakup kernel is 
used.

One thing you might like to do is to log onto Linux as root, and use an 
editor like vim or emacs to edit the file
/boot/grub/menu.lst
go down to the line that says something like
"Title Windows XP Professional"
or whatever, arrow to the start of the word "professional", press I to go 
into insert mode, then press control+v, followed by control+g.  If you then 
look at the word, you'll find a ^ simble before it.

Press
<ESCAPE>:wq
then return, and it should say it's written so many bytes.
What we did, was actually suggested in the guide to installing Fedora with 
Speakup. This is to make the boot manager ring the bell, whenever you arrow 
down to Windows XP.
The default is Linux, so just press Enter, or wait, for the boot.

I hope that's clear.
Reply if it's nott, I'm about to scrap a system and put Debian onto that, so 
can tell you exactly what happens.
I've tried Fedora, and it's nice, but I am kind of experimenting I guess.  I 
want to try FC4, but don't know how to put a speakup kernel into a 
instalation cd.
Marcel

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ned" <ngranic@cox.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2006 6:04 AM
Subject: debian installation


> Hi all,
>
> I installed debian with speakup in my classroom successfully after going 
> through the process once with my instructor. It went so smoothly to the 
> point of being incredible; I mean that was the first ever OS I have ever 
> installed on my own.
>
> Now, you guess, I want to do the same thing here at home on my own 
> machine, and that's where my questions start:
> I have XP Pro on my 40-gig hd which is not partitioned, and I decided to 
> buy one more hd on which I want to install Linux. That 2nd hd would be a 
> slave, so how do I tell the debian to install itself onto that hd and to 
> boot up from it? Is this the best solution? I could get rid of everything 
> that is on the current hd and install Linux only, but in that case, will 
> linux support scanner on which I depend so much?
>
> I need to get this done asap!
>
> Bytheway, is there anybody willing to sell a hardware dec talk synth?
>
> Many thanks in advance!
> Ned
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