debian doesnt like my laptop

[mr.monger]

hi, i am sort of new to linux, and i have a problem with debian running on my laptop. as i do not have a cd drive, i installed it from my desktop (plugged in laptop hd via an adapter), and when i boot in with GRUB to debian, it tells me that it couldn't find /dev/console and then it said kernel panic and it just sat there. also, it said /sbin/init was broken. now, i have been reading about this on the internets, and apparently this happens when you upgrade to kernel 2.6 from 2.4, but i am using 2.4... i have looked in the contents of the laptop hd, and everything was as it should be (well, obviously not, but as far as i could tell hah). i have also heard that grub could be configured wrongly, but i dont think it is. any help is appreciated, and im sorry if i dont make any sense, ive been at this all day, and i am really tired thanks again

[mr.monger]

sorry, i solved it by editing fstab and grub
but now a new problem arises
when i do startx, i get a fata error saying
no screens found
and then it says
XIO: fatal IO error 104 etc etc
someone please help, i dont want to bother to fix it if i can just reinstall it

[iwanabeguru]

try
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

[mr.monger]

thanks, turns out i picked the wrong driver heh

well, i have everything installed, including wireless, but when i try and connect to the school network, it simply wont... that bothers me because we turn in lots of work by laptop. also, we frequently use a networked hard drive to turn in work, and im wondering how i would go about connecting to that. thanks

[antidrugue]

Can you provide more details ?

Which version of Debian is that ?
Which laptop model ?
Which wireless card model ?

And how did you try to connect ?

[mr.monger]

ahh sorry, here it is
i am using a dell d500 with a broadcom bcm4309 with debian 3.1, kernel 2.4.27
after installing ndiswrapper i used kwifimanager and used "scan for networks" and it found 2. i tried both. some background info: the laptop i installed it on is the school issued laptop, and it comes with a very tightly secured version of windows, because they dont want us to mess with them. i installed debian, but i was worried i might not be able to use the network because maybe it requires authentication. i am HOPING it is by MAC address, because if its not i have no idea how im going to be able to use it hah. any help is greatly appreciated, because i know squat about networking
thanks

if it helps, they use novell on the windows laptops.

also, this has nothing to do with linux (mostly) but i was trying to crack the windows password for the admin account, and when i tried a few crackers none of them could crack it, i tried john the ripper, LCP, and ophcrack, and even though i knew whant MY password was (a series of 5 numbers) none except ophcrack could crack it, even if i set it to numbers only. when i went into ophcrack, it told me the accounts HAD NO PASSWORD (other than mine). after i had wasted 20 ish days with john the ripper, i was very dissappointed. what is the deal with this? how can an account have no password, even though it clearly has one...

[Josh.Ovki]

First off i would recommend not trying to crack the admin password, its always a bad idea. Secondly do you know if they have a WEP Key to access the network, if they do you will have to try and find out what it is.

[mr.monger]

like i said, i am a total noob at networking, so you have to tell me how i find out if they use it, however, i now know what it is thanks to wikipedia, and i found an article on how to crack it on tomshardware (tomsnetworking, actually)

also, i have no reason to crack the admin password if i can get debian working

thanks

[mr.monger]

bump

please help guys, if i dont get this working i cant turn in my homework hehe

also, i have a question about something else real quick
i cant write to my windows partition when i mount it, and when i try to give myself writing permissions as root, it says could not change permissions for /mnt/windows
this bothers me, as this means i cant use windows because every time i boot into it, it rewrites my MBR and then blows up so i can never use it again :*(

sorry for being so.... insistent on getting help hah, but i dont think my grades could handle more missing work

[devils casper]

cant write to my windows partition when i mount it, and when i try to give myself writing permissions as root, it says could not change permissions for /mnt/windows

you can write in FAT32 partitions only. Linux has NTFS readonly support. you can write in NTFS through ntfs-3g. check this thread for that.




casper