So I back everything up to my second Hard disk (20gb) and to my amazement the BIOS WOULD allow CDROM as a boot device (you can not believe the problems I had getting my to old machines to work when you had to do everything via the floppy drive). Debian 3.0 CD 1 (of 7) booted very quickly to a text screen offering (for default) a 2.2 Kernel :( but reading a bit further, by typing "bf24" I could have the legendary 2.4 kernel (USB support etc). The screen also advised backing up ANY hard disk so I powered down and unplugged my spare, this is proberly an over cautious step but I have lost data to Linux installs before. First thing in the install process is Language choice, English I think. And then (impressively) it offers English US/UK and even Ireland ! Then a brief intro to Debian Installer (called boot-floppies) and onto keyboard selection. Oh, now the fun, it wants me to make a swap partition, I hope I disconnected the correct HDD :( When I last installed Debian this bit took a few tries, I either created partitions without enough space, or I just did not create enough partitions. OK so I delete the DOS partition and create a new one of 1024mb as swap (leaving the rest unassigned) and setting the type to Linux Swap. Right now it wants some Linux partitions lets go for 2gb for root, 10gb for var and the rest for usr. Thats HDA1 1gb swap HDA2 2gb root HDA3 10gb var HDA4 17gb usr All set (as default) to Linus type partitions I do not want to run a disk check so next it initializes the swap partition Hmmm do i want ext2(standard) or ext3(new and exciting with journaling), I will throw caution to the wind ext3 it is. HDA2 takes 20 odd seconds to initialize, set that as root, HDA3 takes just over 1 min, set that as var and finally HDA4 takes just over 2 mins, set as usr. Next up is installing the kernel, (which I can handily do off the CD) Most everything I will need should be in the kernel, so after checking through I think I will just take the defaults (I can easily add them in later). Well, I will just add in the sound card support, aghhh not good, install failed, I will sort this out later as it is just IRQ etc settings. Oh and I added the USB storage module as I want to be able to use USB hard drives in the future and I have pen drive at the moment. Ah the other bit I hate, host name selection, or in other words what shall I call my machine ?? Well the etching on the side says "bluenuht" so lets go with that (even though thats what this box was called when it was win98 !) Next onto some actual installation, install from CD YES! (and it even noticed I have to CDROM drives (HDC and HDD) (note HDD secondary slave is where I booted from) Base system install takes 4 mins, then to make the system bootable :) Opps left the swap partition bootable, well first mistake so far :( As I have the bootable CD and I have not done anything much in the way of configuration (I wrote down all the HDD settings) I will not create a boot floppy Time for reboot, CD out, else it will boot from it again, and away we go .... hmmmm, BIOS is reporting failure, oh, I left the boot priority on CDROM, change change fiddle, reboot hmmmm nothing :( Why did not create the boot floppy ?!? :( OK, not panic, set boot back to CDROM and reinsert the Debian 3.0 CD again, lets try the rescue option. Drat failed to mount root, but it looked like it was trying to use EXT2, hmmmm Rescue bf24 does not seem to be helping either :( but at least it tried EXT3 :) Right here we go again, I wonder if it is because of EXT3 ? hmmmm lets try EXT2 this time (otherwise all the same). Hmmmm odd the hard drive is showing as FAT32, what the hell ? I am sure I wrote all the partition changes !! Tried creating a boot floppy (with EXT3 on the Hard drive and will not work :( Well I have been at this for some hours now, and I am currently trying everything at a minimum, just a swap partition and the rest root. Every time the cfdisk util shows a Fat32 partition even though i delete it and write all changes !! and now the minimal selection did not work ! Well I have spent even more time and rebooted umpteen times and ..... oh wait a mo .... WOW a LILO boot prompt, maybe its working :) no now I get ChipAwayVirus error boot virus detected, but i think that is just because it can not see windows lets boot anyway. Nah, can not find root file system, still this is the furthest I have got so far ;) better turn off the virus checker in the BIOS I wonder if the BIOS has been blocking HDD partition table writes !? Nope I still get "unable to mount root" pah! Right, good thing I have another machine, lets look at the Docs (I never had this much trouble b4), hmmmm EXT2 should not be used on >6gb partitions, but nothing else that might be relevant ..... Well that was exciting, it skipped over most of the stuff I needed to know more about :( and there no trouble shooting just references to the rescue options WHICH I TRIED AND FAILED !! At this point I know that my hard drive IS getting installed with the base system but that Linux thinks that the root partition is unmountable .... This is getting ridiculous, I am even testing the drive for bad blocks (the BIOS should handle this transparently. There are 7 million blocks to test, and it has already been going for some time :( after an hour less than half the drive has been tested (and I do not think this is going to help) Two and a half hours later and nothing has changed (except I have watched 144 mins of Contact, better film than I remember). Only thing I can think to try now is a kernel 2.2 install :'( I was hoping that the internet would be awash of people having the same issue, but although there were a few none were exactly the same. I toggled to tty2 (ALT+F2) and used fdisk instead of cfdisk, it is much less friendly but seemed to do the job ! Did everything but a swap partition and it worked !! Right now to do it again and see if I CAN have a swap partition I tried creating the partitions in cfdisk (default) and then double checking and rewriting the changes in fdisk but now I get "LILO - Descriptor checksum error" Lets try just using fdisk ... WOW ! it worked! I thought this would have been the quickest and easiest stage of installing Linux, how wrong could I have been ? Just a quick recap, the default disk partitioning program as part of the "boot-floppies" Debian 3.0 install said everything was hunky dorey but then after failing showed old information. To fix this I used (ALT+F2) when asked about partitioning my hard disk and ran fdisk /dev/hda and then deleted existing partition/s and recreated the ones I wanted, wrote changes to disk and all was well when I (ALT+F1) back to the normal install process. And before you say it, I DID make sure cfdisk WROTE changes, I even went back steps and ran cfdisk again and it showed everything FINE !! next step install some stuffs.