Steve Langasek wrote: > On Sat, Mar 03, 2007 at 01:09:10AM -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: >> This has got to be the most problematic install I've ever had, I >> think. I have no idea how many times I've had to reboot to the "good" >> install on the internal scsi drive to try to fix something on the >> debootstrap install on the external drive. The docs at >> http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/alpha/apds03.html.en#id2549076 gave >> as their final instruction to run "tasksel install standard" for a more >> complete system, which I did. Wish I hadn't. One thing it did was to >> totally overwrite my /etc/fstab file with totally erroneus drive mapping > > That doesn't make any sense, frankly. Nothing should ever overwrite > /etc/fstab, and certainly nothing should do so after you've already done a > base install with debootstrap. >
Yeah, I know -- no sense whatsoever, but that's what it did. I had previously set up fstab by hand, first copying the internal drive's fstab then modifying it to reflect the /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sda -- and what tasksel put in there had no relation to that fstab whatsoever -- not even in the same order, and all /dev/hda -- even the cdrom was changed from /dev/scd0 mounted at /media/cdrom0 to /dev/cdrom at cdrom. Very strange -- I have no clue where it was getting that from. >> But now it still boots weird -- the main screen, whether I do a >> serial console boot or a regular tga console boot, never shows the total >> boot -- that is, you never get a login prompt. I thought for awhile that >> the boot was totally failing, but then saw in my server logs that it was >> getting an IP, so tried to ssh into it, and it seems like it's all >> booted and running normally -- just no console at all. > > I'd guess this is a result of debootstrap not setting up /etc/inittab for > you; and possibly other bits of system config that are handled by the > installer, not by debootstrap. debootstrap will give you all the packages > from the base system, but there is no longer a base-config package to do > base configuration, so certain things like /etc/inittab, /etc/fstab, > /etc/networking are going to be unconfigured at the end of debootstrap and > need to be set up by hand. > Yes, and I did all that. But I just now checked inittab, thinking that since fstab got overwritten, maybe inittab did too -- but what was wrong there was it looked like I must have done a copy from "more /etc/fstab" as it had one line missing and extra characters in the preceeding line. Thanks. Now it boots to a login prompt. -- Harmon Seaver -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]