Hi, I am no expert but I've been working on the same thing for a bit. Seems that no distros play well together in the boot env. first with Slackware you know you can get a system booted with speach because that is where the install starts. So you can always work from there. next if you have a debian netinst disk of etch burned use speakup -- rescue as i remember, check the readme for syntax on that one. or you could also edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and change stuff in there, I always move windows to the last entry on the box with it installed. I've been successful at getting debian and fedora to boot with grub so it does actually work. If you use Slackware with the grub there is a bug where 12.1 doesn't install properly. it will install grub and run "grub-install hd0" but there is no menu.lst file installed on a fresh install leaving the install unbootable.At that point I either mount a different partition with a good menu.lst file and copy it to /boot/grub/menu.lstthen edit it to suit my needs. and rerun grub-install hd0 as I boot from my primary array. So I have been doing the same thing you are talking about with reinstalling with a debian install disc when worse comes to oworse. Hope this helps Dan From: Steve Holmes <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: New Debian Install - HELP! To: speakup at braille.uwo.ca Message-ID: <20081011084227.GA21623 at pillow.holmesgrown.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-action=pgp-signed -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 Yeah, I got past that now. I did it by pressing down arrow once followed by tab and then typed speakup.synth=spkout. That part worked. I am having a hang-up right now as grub is the default loader and after the install finished, I was forced to reboot. First of all, I don't know how to interract with grub and over-ride kernel parameters; but worse yet, my machine at the moment won't boot into anything!!!. I have an existing windows partition on the first disk and am I'm installing linux on the second disk. Apparently, grub did not configure this properly. It's like windows is trying to boot strait away and grub never comes up at all. I'm now sitting here waiting to errase the entire linux partition so I can start over with Debian and maybe I can get the thing to skip grub and install lilo instead. I know lilo from my Slackware days and I know it is capable of booting on one drive and dual booting for both windows and linux. Plus I can make lilo talk at the beginning. Grub looks to o convoluted to me as a first impression.
