Package: installation-reports Debian-installer-version: 4th April from http://people.debian.org/~vorlon/d-i/images/daily/netboot/ Date: 4th April Method: Netboot and network install
Machine: Alphastation 500/233 Processor: EV5 233MHz Memory: 96MB Root Device: SCSI, qlogicisp Base System Installation Checklist: Initial boot worked: [E] Configure network HW: [O] Config network: [O] Detect CD: [ ] Load installer modules: [E] Detect hard drives: [E] Partition hard drives: [O] Create file systems: [O] Mount partitions: [E] Install base system: [ ] Install boot loader: [ ] Reboot: [ ] [O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it Comments/Problems: The netboot images on the daily build don't work - we don't ship a bootloader that can netboot separate images (and, as far as I can tell, we don't actually ship a bootloader that can netboot at all...). It's impossible to cross-compile netbooting alpha kernels on a 32-bit system due to breakage in the objstrip utility, and even on an alpha they currently don't seem to build (undefined references to printk in some of the lib files - I think the build system assumes that it can use the kernel lib.a without all of the kernel, which fails in this case). Hacking around that I generated a kernel and libc, and could then netboot this with (remembered, so possibly slightly wrong) boot -fl "root=/dev/rd/0 ramdisk_size=16384 init=/linuxrc devfs=mount,da console=ttyS0,9600 rw" ewa0 which then launched the installer. Everything then went fine up to mirror selection - the.earth.li was offered as a mirror despite not carrying anything other than i386+source, and so failed. Once that was rectified, the install continued until partitioning. Here I was given a confusing message telling me I could automatically or manually partition a disk, but was only given the opportunity to manually edit it. Choosing this gave me the same menu. After dropping to a shell, I found that this was because the qlogicisp driver was not available, but is required for this hardware. I retrieved this from the kernel package manually and inserted it, at which point partitioning worked fine. The installer then failed to mount / - I believe that this was because the ext3 module failed to insmod (probably due to me compiling the kernel with a slightly different version of gcc to the one used to build the modules. I used the modules from the mirror with my own kernel, which was an invitation for breakage). At this point I gave up due to time constraints - any other problems would be likely to be alpha-wide rather than netboot specific anyway. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
