Bug#932939: Confirmed bug 932939
On 10/1/19 5:23 AM, Jeff wrote: > Confirmed the same. > > Sep 30 23:40:50 debconf: Setting debconf/language to en > Sep 30 23:40:50 kernel: [ 140.827798] main-menu[16157]: segfault at 1 > ip 7f2eeec81554 sp 7ffdd0809cc8 error 4 in > libc.so.6[7f2eeec11000+148000] > Sep 30 23:40:50 kernel: [ 140.827811] Code: 1f 80 00 00 00 00 66 0f > 6e ce 89 f9 66 0f 60 c9 48 85 d2 0f 84 0d 03 00 00 66 0f 60 c9 83 e1 > 3f 66 0f 70 c9 00 83 f9 30 77 3c 0f 6f 07 66 0f 74 c1 66 0f d7 c0 > 85 c0 0f 85 a8 02 00 00 48 83 > > Changed pxe console boot kernel options from: >console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8 > to: >console=ttyS0,115200n8 > Thank you for confirming. -- Ashish SHUKLA signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#932939: Confirmed bug 932939
Confirmed the same. Sep 30 23:40:50 debconf: Setting debconf/language to en Sep 30 23:40:50 kernel: [ 140.827798] main-menu[16157]: segfault at 1 ip 7f2eeec81554 sp 7ffdd0809cc8 error 4 in libc.so.6[7f2eeec11000+148000] Sep 30 23:40:50 kernel: [ 140.827811] Code: 1f 80 00 00 00 00 66 0f 6e ce 89 f9 66 0f 60 c9 48 85 d2 0f 84 0d 03 00 00 66 0f 60 c9 83 e1 3f 66 0f 70 c9 00 83 f9 30 77 3c 0f 6f 07 66 0f 74 c1 66 0f d7 c0 85 c0 0f 85 a8 02 00 00 48 83 Changed pxe console boot kernel options from: console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8 to: console=ttyS0,115200n8
Bug#935931: Re: Bug#935931: debian-installer: Reinstalling Debian on a current Debian installation without erasing or fomatting the home folder
Dear Lennart, I hope that when one opens a "whishlist bug" at least there is a chance to have a confrontation. The main point I want to address is when you do a "smart installation" it is supposed to perform a clean installation hence the only folder that must to be untouched is "/home". The same concept when you have "/" and "/home" in separated partitions and you perform a clean installation. I think that is pretty trivial, the smart parts are: * the installer is able to check for a previous Debian installation before to begin the process; * and in case it founds a previous installation, the installer, is able to perform a fresh installation without overwriting the "/home" folder. I can confirm that ElementaryOS and POP!_OS, that share the same installer, can do that. Last point I want touch is about the swap partition. With the SSD and the OS able to boot in a bunch of seconds the hibernation doesn't make any sense today. For example I have 16GB of ram, based on the standard rules I should use at least 1.5x of the ram if not the double. It means that I should use 32GB just to hibernate my session, no way... With the SSD disks the lesser you write on the disk the better, I put just 2GB of swap-file and "swappiness" at 1 and the swap is never used and I didn't waste 30GB of space. To conclude I think I elaborated everything clearly, I see a lot of benefits and improvement with the suggestions I gave to Debian, I also think that are pretty trivial to implement. I don't want introduce a Windows behavior of "reinstall when it broken", but back to time when I hadn't a fast internet connection it was faster download the full ISO and performing a fresh installation rather than doing a "dist-upgrade". The bottom line is with a smart installer you don't need to separate your disk(s) in partitions but you can throw everything in "/" including the "swap" as swap-file that you can modify freely based on your needs (if you can't live without hibernation[1]). There is also a dynamic swap manager available on Debian as well: https://github.com/Tookmund/Swapspace My best, Daniel [1] It needs some tuning to work: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management/Suspend_and_hibernate#Hibernation_into_swap_file On 9/30/19 9:49 AM, Lennart Sorensen wrote: On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 11:27:29PM -0400, Daniel wrote: Hi Nicholas, thanks for your reply, I really appreciated your constructive approach. I use Debian since 2007 and I did a lot of installation, I personally use a FrankenDebian (testing with pinning toward SID and Experimental) however when I install Debian on other machines I install definitely the current stable available. I have been performing exclusively desktop installations and while I consider the best option separating /home recently I found myself not able to get the right balance between "/", "/home" and "swap". The default "/" assigned is often too small while sometimes I wasted gigabyte never used. The "swap" with the amount of ram available today is always more accessory and with the SSD disk the trend is to reduce its use the most. Eventually I stopped to create a "swap" partition in favor of a "swap-file" (like Raspian e.g.); hence I also stopped to create "/" and "/home" but just "/" and still as LVM; at this point you don't have anymore issue with the space and if you need you can add all the disks you want because it is still a LVM partition. Now the case I am figuring out is the one you didn't separe "/" and "/home" (however the installer is still creating "swap") but you need to reinstall Debian because you screwed it up for some reason. Now a smart installer before to start everything takes its time to check the disk and discovers that you have, along a crypted disk and a LVM group, also a previous version of Debian hence check the users and it asks you if you want keep all the users, just one, etc... and then it reinstalls the system and recovers the setting from the user(s) you selected, without creating a FrankenDebian but just a fresh and **smart** installation. This leads in my opinion in creating a further voice for the Debian install: **the desktop installation**; Standard and Advanced are eventually too generic and do not target properly the desktop cases. If the D-I was properly able to read LUKS and LVM during the installation time, and if was also able to perform a smart installation as described in the paragraph above, a Desktop installation should be: 1. Create an encrypted partition by default (LUKS + LVM); I rarely do that, but I can see why some people want it. 2. install everything in / ; I do tend to prefer that for most setups myself. 3. not create a "swap partition" but a swap-file. My understanding is that suspend to disk works much easier with a swap partition still, but my information could be out of date on that. And of course swap smaller than ram makes suspend to disk not possible. I also add that: 4.
Bug#935931: Re: Bug#935931: debian-installer: Reinstalling Debian on a current Debian installation without erasing or fomatting the home folder
On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 11:27:29PM -0400, Daniel wrote: > Hi Nicholas, > > thanks for your reply, I really appreciated your constructive approach. > > I use Debian since 2007 and I did a lot of installation, I personally use a > FrankenDebian (testing with pinning toward SID and Experimental) however > when I install Debian on other machines I install definitely the current > stable available. I have been performing exclusively desktop installations > and while I consider the best option separating /home recently I found > myself not able to get the right balance between "/", "/home" and "swap". > The default "/" assigned is often too small while sometimes I wasted > gigabyte never used. The "swap" with the amount of ram available today is > always more accessory and with the SSD disk the trend is to reduce its use > the most. Eventually I stopped to create a "swap" partition in favor of a > "swap-file" (like Raspian e.g.); hence I also stopped to create "/" and > "/home" but just "/" and still as LVM; at this point you don't have anymore > issue with the space and if you need you can add all the disks you want > because it is still a LVM partition. > > Now the case I am figuring out is the one you didn't separe "/" and "/home" > (however the installer is still creating "swap") but you need to reinstall > Debian because you screwed it up for some reason. Now a smart installer > before to start everything takes its time to check the disk and discovers > that you have, along a crypted disk and a LVM group, also a previous version > of Debian hence check the users and it asks you if you want keep all the > users, just one, etc... and then it reinstalls the system and recovers the > setting from the user(s) you selected, without creating a FrankenDebian but > just a fresh and **smart** installation. > > This leads in my opinion in creating a further voice for the Debian install: > **the desktop installation**; Standard and Advanced are eventually too > generic and do not target properly the desktop cases. If the D-I was > properly able to read LUKS and LVM during the installation time, and if was > also able to perform a smart installation as described in the paragraph > above, a Desktop installation should be: > > 1. Create an encrypted partition by default (LUKS + LVM); I rarely do that, but I can see why some people want it. > 2. install everything in / ; I do tend to prefer that for most setups myself. > 3. not create a "swap partition" but a swap-file. My understanding is that suspend to disk works much easier with a swap partition still, but my information could be out of date on that. And of course swap smaller than ram makes suspend to disk not possible. > I also add that: > > 4. should deactivate root user by default, which is now considering a best > practice; Not sure I agree it is considered best practices. A lot of distributions do it, but not all. I do prefer root login to work from the console if I have to fix something. > 5. should deactivate the source repos and asking to activate the "contrib" > and "non-free" repos (like in Advanced Mode). > > > I don't see any complicated tasks to achieve, others Linux distro already > started to move in this direction while other *nix operative systems already > do that since a long time. Other distributions (Certainly the case for redhat based stuff in the past) had to do it since they didn't have a working in place upgrade. That rather makes it required that the installer can do an upgrade and detect existing settings. Debian seems to have always aimed for an in place upgrade that worked, so the installer really only had the purpose of the initial install. It's one of the things that made me switch to Debian over 20 years ago. I have never had to do a reinstall of a Debian system except on a machine that lost the disk and I didn't have a backup of it (nothing important was kept on that system). I really should have replaced that other disk in the RAID1 within a reasonable amount of time. :) > The only issues I see here are the resistance to the changes and the fact > that actually the D-I has some issue to recognize the encrypted partitions > and if you want reinstall Debian you can't preserve any of the partitions > you want because it will consider the encrypted disks as blanks. Collecting all those settings does not sound like a trivial job, and based on the normal use case of a Debian install, I sure don't see the value in it. How do you even decide which settings should be preserved and which should not? What if one of the settings is what broke your system? If you screw up the system, go fix it. You will learn something from it. Blowing away the system and installing it again means you learn nothing, waste a bunch of time, and will likely do it again in the future. I have certainly broken my installs over the years and had to fix it, but it has always been possible. Running unstable and experimental stuff at times mean
Re: Question about building a full bootable image using (Debian 7)
On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 01:21:19PM +, g4jht wrote: > Hi, I am sending this to you guys in a sort of last resort desperation. > As it only relates to Debian as that is my current build environment. > > Help Please. > > My problem how to build a bootable iso image file (not of Debian) > > I have an iso file [for an early version of UNIX (x86_32 code)]. I have > stripped the files into a directory, then copied them (via tar) into my iso > build directory, made my modifications I am OK up to that point. Copying the files from a CD does not include copying any boot code from the CD. Assuming it ever was bootable. > My Question is: > How do I create a new bootable iso image file from my build directory ready > for burning onto a DVD. > I tried just burning the build directory tree but did not boot (I suspected > as much but did it anyway). > I am obviously missing as step maybe tools. target is a 486 bare machine and > a P6 machine in both cases without an O/S, what on the DVD will eventually > end up on the HD, once the DVD "works". > Any help appreciated, and I know this sort of an oddball question. > > [please CC me directly with your solution, thank you. > > regards, Dave :-) (Ps not a newbie). How you make a bootable CD depends on the boot system supported by the target system, and which boot loader you have. On x86 machines, the boot system for CD has usually been 'el torito' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Torito_(CD-ROM_standard) Certainly the mkisofs/xorriso/etc tools have options to tell it where the boot loader floppy image or HD style boot files are. Booting from HD/USB is totally different, so making it boot from CD/DVD has nothing to do with booting from HD. Very few 486 machines can even boot from CD at all in my experience. It just wasn't a thing yet. I remember having to make boot floppies to install Windows NT4 on a Pentium Pro in 1997, because the Adapter 2940UW firmware didn't support 'el torito no emulation' boot yet, which NT used, while linux installs could boot because they used 'el torito floppy emulation' boot mode instead. At a later time a firmware update for the scsi controller added the needed support to allow directly booting NT and newer linux installers that used the other mode. -- Len Sorensen
