Am having trouble installing debian. The problem when runing my first new base system boot, the grub works fine and allows me to select my Os, cause a doing DUAL. now debian. according to my manual (Australian Linux) a few messages scroll past and a welcome screen should greet me. The messages do sroll past, but stop with the line "hw-"something" loaded sucessfully.........." and thats it. nothing else happens. it stays there even overnight i cant get past tihis obstacle to continue to time zone configurations............. any one with any ideas.

I am a newbie so please try to be as plain as possible

hw-something??

lol it would be nice if you included the proper line, i am at work at the moment but i will check my system boting up tonight, try identify the line and then we can try to work out what is making the system hang.

Do you have any strange (new) hardware??

Assuming you have a fast connection read:

Debian installation with the net-installer
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...icle&artid=330

Get the CD (180 MB) from:
Official netinst images for the "stable" release
http://www.us.debian.org/CD/netinst/
Choose the i386 one.

Afterwards, read the sticky at the top of this page:
Debian Configuration Post-installation (it's about 10 pages long with tips and answers for blokes just like you)

Read, read, read, and you will ask questions that make sense.
Sometimes the longest way is the fastest.

Do not feel bad, we all started like you.

during the first system boot from the new base system, the last the 2 sentences on my screen are

hw-random hardware driver 1.0.0 loaded
hw-random: loaded sucessfully

_ (cusor blinking, dont know what it wants me to do!)

Thats it nothing happens hereafter, i dont know if this is meaningfull to anyone but i can't think of any sensible question to ask at this point

if this helps am trying Debian sarge 3.1 revision 0a, on a compaq presario (wireless) , dual boot

Again i cant use the Debian installation with the net-installer, because am using wLan

After some quick searching at www.google.com/linux it appears that the hw-random is referring to the HW (hardware) Random Number Generator. Since the boot process should normally continue after this, I am assuming that this is abnormal and there is thus a problem with the installation.

Example references to "hw random":
http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypt.../msg00010.html
http://linux-on-laptops.com/forum/ar....php/t-46.html


Unfortunately, I don't know what to suggest the problem or a solution might be, especially since it says the module loaded successfully. The above references seem to be about laptops; I assume a Compaq Presario is also a laptop.

Since the problem appears to come during hardware initialization, this may not be a Debian-specific problem, beyond hardware detection.

Wish I could be of more help...

After reading the help meus on the installation disks i managed to overcome my above problems and managed to install debian sarge. Its up and running now, but problems dont seem to leave me. my wireless dosnt work! i tried to configure it using kwifi but nothing, no sound, so i cant listen to music and my cd slot wont open after i have inserted a disk, i recive a message cd rom is busy. i can play video clips but no sound, i dont understand why?

Wow, you really are starting from scratch. You have to unmount the CD before you can eject it. You should have a CD icon on your desktop. Right click that, then select "unmount". You can do the same thing from the file manager. Or you can unmount it from the shell "umount /dev/cdrom".

I had a sound "problem" too. The solution was so silly I'm almost ashamed to mention it. Have you checked the volume? (HW and SW).

Don't worry I went through (am still going through) the same thing. We're learning together.

Not to pick a nit or anything, but you might want to consider posting in the Newbie forum as most of these questions aren't Debian specific. Also, you might want to consider searching and reading more and posting less. The answers to all your questions are already available in the man pages, google, and this forum. I avoided posting in this forum for as long as I could to try to avoid looking stupid. Unfortunately, I've given myself up on that score long ago.