On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 17:08:26 +0100, Michael Holzt <kju@fqdn.org> wrote:
> > Good job to the Debian people for making a seamless and easy to deal
> > with OS (other than install but I think that's coming along too).
> 
> Have you already tried our new installer coming up with the next release
> (sarge)? Its a real major improvement to the pita installers we had before.

Heard about it, gotta try it. We have a big Debian evangelist here at
work, but unfortunately my company follows the "RH" mainstream route
still. Ugh.

> I've already utilised tcpdump and ethereal (latter one is more helpful for
> this) and i can clearly see that the machine fetches the NetBSD kernel from
> the boot server and after that nothing else happens. The blinking nic led
> after this seems strange.

If you're sure it loaded the entire kernel, then there's about 2 possibilities:

1. The hardware doesn't like the kernel, because you should see some
small amount of traffic at the end of the kernel boot process as it
tries to find it's settings and root.

2. The hardware is broke.

Option 1 is workable. I'd still try setting up a quickie netboot
server with a later 2.0-something kernel. Option 2 sucks, obviously.
But in that case, try unplugging the hard drive, reseating the memory,
reseating the riser board, etc. I'm sure you know all of this
already...

Andy