Installing Debian while a running Red Hat 8.0 system

I've been running a triple bootable Compaq Armada M700 laptop --
Microsoft Windows 2000, Red Hat 8.0 and Debian. On the internal disk
is W2k and RH8 a long with my /home partition. A second disk in the
multibay slot had Debian/sarge on it. I recently replaced the second
disk with a new 20G drive and thought it would be simpler to reinstall
debian on the new disk rather than try to restore it from the previous
disk. Here are my step by step instructions on on how I installed
Debian on the second drive while running Red Hat.

I'm also going to try to note all the packages/configurations needed for this d
ebian laptop which other people may find useful.

The first thing to do is read the instructions from "chroot
Debian Install From A Booted System mini-HOWTO"

Partition disk as to create a 4G partition (/dev/hdb1) and a 512M
swap disk (/dev/hdb2), the rest will be carved up later.

 mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdb1
 mkswap /dev/hdb2

Create a directory for the new partition and then mount it,

  mkdir /debian-root
  mount -t ext3 /dev/hdb1 /debian-root/

Grab the debian potato base

   http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main/disks-i386/current/base2_
2.tgz

Unpack into a free partition

 cd /debian-root
 tar zxvf ~/base2_2.tgz

chroot into the environment:

   chroot /debian-root bin/bash

create a reasonable fstab for the new partition

The debian root will be on my 2nd disk. There is also a swap disk
on the 2nd disk as well as the first (currently used by Red Hat,
more on that later)

  #
  #                  
  /dev/hdb1       /           ext3     defaults                       0 0
  /dev/hdb2       none        swap    sw                              0 0
  proc        /proc       proc    defaults                        0 0

/proc

Set timezone (the dpkg-reconfigure console-data didn't work for me.)

   tzconfig

(re)configure the debian base

Copy what in Red Hat's /etc/resolv.conf into the chroot'ed /etc/resolv.conf

  search americas.cpqcorp.net
  nameserver 16.103.131.242

Set any proxies if you need them.

  export -p http_proxy=http://proxy.compaq.com:8080
  export -p no_proxy=.hp.com

Consider editing /etc/apt/sources.list if you have a local debian
mirror that carries 'potato'

  dpkg-reconfigure base-config

At this point it will download a bunch of files from the debian mirror
site.

I get this error:

/var/lib/dpkg/info/base-config.postinst: /usr/share/base-config/stage4: No su
ch
file or directory

One thing this doesn't do is remove /sbin/unconfigured.sh

Edit /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

/etc/hostname put some one word in that file for your hostname, in my case
elephanttalk

While at 'stable':

    $ apt-get update
    $ apt-get dist-upgrade

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to use 'sarge' instead and upgrade to
sarge...

    $ apt-get update
    $ apt-get dist-upgrade

    $ dpkg-reconfigure -a     # just for good measure

Install a kernel and bunch of useful tools...

$ apt-get install kernel-headers-2.4.20-686 kernel-image-2.4.20-686 aptitude ss
h emacs21

NOTE: Say no to any lilo configuration. I used grub which is on the
MBR of the first disk.

removed /sbin/unconfigured.sh

 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback

 auto eth0
 iface eth0 inet dhcp

In /etc/grub.conf of the redhat 8.0 system, add this:

title Debian/sarge (2.4.20)
        root (hd1,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz ro vga=0f07 root=/dev/hdb1
        initrd /initrd.img

reboot

to get the network up, I needed to manually type 'insmod e100' and then '
ifup eth0'.

use tasksel and pick X window system, laptop system and install a
bunch of stuff.

Use dselect and add kdebase. This will require a bunch of other
packages, add enough that kdebase can be installed.

I like the look of kde's login manager better than xdm, apt-get
install kdm.

apt-get these essential apps: rsync, kernel-pcmcia-2.4.20-686

getting networking (wired & wireless) going:

Add to /etc/modules

     e100               # for builtin 10/100
     yenta_socket       #   pcmcia for Compaq Armada M700