Package: installation-reports version: rc1 severity: normal Debian-installer-version: Sarge RC1 downloaded from http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/sarge_d-i/i386/rc1/sarge-i386-netinst.iso uname -a: Linux (none) 2.4.26-1-386 #2 Sat May 1 16:31:24 EST 2004 i686 unknown Date: 2004-08-14T12:00:00 GMT+10 Method: booted off internal cdrom, with netinst iso
Machine: Dell Latitude CPiA Processor: Intel pII 364MHz Memory: 128Mb Root Device: Root Size/partition table: Output of lspci: Base System Installation Checklist: Initial boot worked: [O] Configure network HW: [ ] Config network: [ ] Detect CD: [E] Load installer modules: [ ] Detect hard drives: [O] Partition hard drives: [ ] Create file systems: [ ] Mount partitions: [ ] Install base system: [ ] Install boot loader: [ ] Reboot: [ ] [O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it Comments/Problems: Tried two different boot commands. 1. "linux" The installation fails at the question - "load installer components from CD" claiming it cannot find anything to load. Getting into a shell (<ctrl><alt><F2>), "df" shows /cdrom is mounted (/dev/cdroms/cdrom0) ls -l /cdrom/dists shows a directory named "sarge" four ordinary files - "frozen","stable","testing","unstable" 2. "expert" before the "detect & mount cdrom" step I started a shell (<ctrl><alt><F2>) and gave these commands modprobe ide-core options="ide=nodma" modprobe piix modprobe ide-detect Back in the main installer screen. I selected the detect & mount cddrom option. This took me to a long list of modules that autodetection suggested were necessary. I turned off all but these: ide-disk, ide-cd, isofs when prompted to enter parameters for these modules, I said "Y" but did not enter any parameters. The modules loaded with no errors. Next I was prompted to "Start PC card services?" I said "N" The installer warned that some modules were not available or installed (can't recall which). The list was agpgart, ide-mod, ide-probe-mod, ide-generic, ide-floppy Next I get a report that it has detected a good cdrom: Debian GNU/Linux testing "Sarge" - Official NetInst Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20040806) When prompted to "Load installer components from cd?" I said "Y" Now it shows the list of installer components to load. This is the step that failed before. As a further check, ls -l /cdrom/dists shows several symlinks, all pointing to the "sarge" directory. Analysis: --------- This is the same bug as 247704 and 250323. But see below for a new one. The nondetection is happening because DMA is turned on for cdrom devices and the cdrom in this laptop doesn't play nicely with that. The nicest way to resolve this problem would be to set CONFIG_IDEDMA_ONLYDISK=y Failing that, there is another path, explaining how to turn off dma for the cdrom. Is it possible to do this from the linux boot line? That would be much simpler than having to muck about in expert mode and modprobing things in the right order (it took me a while to figure out I needed to modprobe _before_ doing the cdrom detect step). If this is possible, perhaps the text for that (and a pointer to the complete list of boot options) could go in the Errata pages. New bug: The cdrom-detect script does not adequately check that it has found the Release file. Please could someone clone this bug to the appropriate package, and add a "patch" tag? The problem is this: /var/lib/dpkg/info/cdrom-detect.postinst sets "suite" using this code: for distlink in stable testing unstable ; do relfile=/cdrom/dists/$distlink/Release if [ -e $relfile ] ; then suite=$(sed -n 's/^Suite: *//p' $relfile) log "Detected CD with '$suite' distribution" db_set mirror/suite $suite break fi done But it never checks that the value of "suite" is correct, ie that the "[ -e $relfile ]" test condition was ever true. This causes the cdrom-detect program to exit with an incorrect status (ok, when in fact detection failed at some level) and a subsequent failure in cdrom-retriever. I propose these lines be appended below the "done" statement: -------------------------------- snip ------------------------------------ if [ "X" = "X${suite}" ]; then fail "Could not determine the package 'suite'. Is the cdrom OK?" fi if [ ! -e "/cdrom/dists/$suite/Release" ]; then fail "No such file '/cdrom/dists/$suite/Release'. Is the cdrom OK?" fi -------------------------------- snip ------------------------------------ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]