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Laptop LCD only shows half of the screen
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Known affected systems
Toshiba Portege 3500
Symptoms
Only the top half of the screen is visible - the bottom half is totally black.
Workaround
Obviously, this is a major setback to your install!
So, to fix, press the ["Fn"] and ["F5"] button together.
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Laptop keyboard problem
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Known affected systems
- Acer Travelmate 540
- Compaq Presario 2100
- Compaq Evo N1015v
- Dell Dimension 8250
- Sony Vaio PCG-K25
Symptoms
Keyboard does not respond to initial language selection screen.
Workaround
Either :
- Use an external USB keyboard
- As linux boots, tap caps lock quickly over and over. Keep doing it until you get to the installer's language selection screen, at which point, if you're lucky, the keyboard will work.
- Go into the BIOS (press F12 at dell logo and choose system configuration or something similar) and disable "USB Emulation" (its in there somewhere). Your keyboard will work then.
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System Lockup on PCMCIA load
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Known affected systems
Dell Inspiron 600m
Symptoms
When probing for hardware, the system locks up while loading PC Card devices.
Workaround
A workaround is described in the Sarge installation manual: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/ch05s01.html#id2512042
Boot stops after USB probe or can not read CD ROM
Known affected systems
17" Apple ?PowerBook 1 Ghz (first version 17")
Workaround
Dissable Level 3 memory cache i.e. install-powerpc nol3
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PCMCIA device shifting (between CD-ROM and NIC) during install
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Problem
You want to install Debian via CD, but you only have your CD-ROM drive and NIC (which you want to setup and use as primary NIC during installation) accessible via a single PCMCIA slot in your computer.
Workaround
Boot the installer with the CD-ROM device plugged into the PCMCIA slot and do a normal 1st stage installation, except that you should skip network setup or just type in dummy values at this point.
Then when it says "Installation complete", choose 'Go back' to drop back to the main menu. Now change the PCMCIA device from CD-ROM to NIC, and choose to 'Detect network hardware'. Your NIC should now be detected and you can continue (again 'Go back' to main menu) to 'Network configuration'.
If your NIC is a wireless, press Alt+F2 to get a shell. Change the PCMCIA device from NIC to CD-ROM and type in the shell:
chroot /target mount /cdrom apt-get install wireless-tools umount /cdrom exit
Go back to Alt+F1 and change the PCMCIA device from CD-ROM to NIC.
Choose 'Continue' to reboot (with NIC in PCMCIA slot) and thereby finish the 1st stage of the installation process.
When 2st stage comes up after the reboot, you should have a working NIC and as such you can choose to download extra packages via ftp, http, etc.
Should you, however, not have a working NIC at this point, go to the shell (Alt+F2) and try to reload your NIC:
ifdown <iface> && ifup <iface>
Return to Alt+F1 and continue installation (assuming networking now works)...
B/R, Frederik Dannemare
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Netbooting, installing to usb stick(s)
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Problem
You want to install Debian via netboot to usb memory sticks (no ordinary disks available).
Workaround
I just tried to install sarge onto my STB-3036 unit via netbooting (dhcpd/tftpd). The only 'disks' available on this unit is 2x128 MB usb memory sticks.
Had to boot with "linux debian-installer/framebuffer=false".
The netboot image, however, doesn't have the usb-storage module included. Thus, I had to extract this module from kernel-image-2.4.26-1-386_2.4.26-4_i386.deb and place it on a web server available to the STB-3036.
Then when partman prompted me to "Partition disks", I went to a shell and worked my way around the problem:
mknod /dev/sda b 8 0 mknod /dev/sdb b 8 16 mkdir /lib/modules/2.4.26-1-386/kernel/drivers/usb/storage cd /lib/modules/2.4.26-1-386/kernel/drivers/usb/storage wget http://www-host/foo/bar/usb-storage.o depmod -a modprobe usb-storage modprobe sd_mod
Went back to Alt+F1 and reloaded the partitioner. Now I could see my usb sticks available as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.
I was really nervous at the very end of the installation, since 'df -h' told me that 116.4 MB out of 117.1 MB (on /) was used Had a separate partition for /var where 81.6 MB out of 88.5 was used. Swap space was 32 MB (20 MB was in use).
Upon reboot I went to BIOS, only to discover that the STB-3036 in fact does not supporting boot from usb. Yeah, really stupid I did not check up on this, but I was certain that I has seen this option in BIOS.
Well, at least I hope somebody with a usb bootable unit can make use of this stuff.
B/R, Frederik Dannemare