Re: Testing the new boot floppies
On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Joey Hess wrote:
> Dale Scheetz wrote:
> > The PPP option is never set in /root/dbootstrap_settings (I've looked a
> > couple of times at your previous directions)
> >
> > I don't know what the "something" is that dbootstrap wants either. If you
> > don't install the Ethernet driver for your card, the network configuration
> > complains. In the previous release, after declaring a host name, you were
> > asked if you were on a network, and told to answer no if you were going to
> > use the PPP connection method. This question is never asked. PPP is never
> > mentioned in any of the install screens that I have seen, so I don't know
> > where, or what you would click to make this flag be set.
>
> Ok. If there's someone who knows how this is supposed to work, could you
> please speak up?
You mean we don't have a spec? ;-)
>
> If nobody knowns, I'm going to go read the relevant parts of dbootstrap,
> and if I can't figure them out, I may just make base-config _always_
> prompt about whether ppp should be used.
This gets my vote.
>
> > It sounds like you can set it up to ask about ppp dispite the lack of a
> > flag in /root/dbootstrap_settings? If you could do this, I would be
> > satisfied ;-)
>
> Well I wasn't installing, just running base-config in a chrooted
> base-system that I prepped by making the file myself.
>
> > Well, my experience was a bit different. The first time, when I dropped
> > the ppp connection the download process simply hung, all counters stopped.
> > I suppose if I had been patient I might have experienced some kind of
> > timeout, but I wasn't and I didn't.
> >
> > When I went back the next day and ran it again, it only estimated 4 hours,
> > and only took about 6. When it was done, gpm and man-db had failed to
> > download and I was asked if I wanted to retry. This failed with the same
> > "file not found" errors as before, however, when I finally ran the process
> > from scratch (restarting base-config) it was able to retrieve and install
> > these two packages.
>
> Sounds to me like it probably needed to re-run apt-get update, since you
> were installing from frozen and those packages presumably changed in the
> meantime.
>
> Hmm. I can run apt-get update everytime, though the chances of getting
> bitten by that once it's stable are slim.
I've had a bit more experience with apt-get now, and so I'm not having as
many problems. But then I'm running from the command line, and have no
idea what the base-config script actually asks apt to perform.
>
> > On the first failure however, when I answered "No" nothing else happened.
> > The messages I recieved suggested that gpm and man-db were the only
> > packages not installed, but dpkg quickly informed me that none of the
> > intended packages hd been installed. I tried apt-get install * but was
> > told that the first file in the archives was not found (even though it was
> > truely there). Cd'd to the archives directory and ran dpkg -i ./*.deb and
> > got everything to install that was in the archives with three minor
> > esceptions. Two tetex packages had not even been unpacked, and another
> > package (don't remember) had to be configured.
> >
> > When I returned to this process again, the packages selected were
> > downloaded (gpm and man-db) and installed. It seems if there are any
> > download problems the install stops without trying to install the packages
> > that _were_ downloaded. This is less than helpful.
>
> Apt thing, talk to Jason Gunthorpe.
>
I'll try...
> > On the task selection screen I selected all the gnome tasks and all the
> > xfree86 tasks and the only package I get installed is xfree_common, seems
> > that these tasks don't work!
>
> That's quite strange.
>
Specially since I can use apt-get install on each of the desired task
packages explicitly and it works just fine. It's entirely possible that I
was working with an already mangled cache for base-config by that point.
It seems that running it several times in succession can get some things
tangled up pretty good. I'll try to start with fresh clean installs so my
information is less muddy. I'm getting my first install pretty much the
way I want it, so I'm going to have to work on one of my other test
partitions. I just recently re-arranged my disk drives, and I currently
have room for 3 more OSs. My plan had been to put several other distros on
these partitions for some LSB testing I need to do, but I can certainly
use them for testing in the mean time.
Waiting is,
Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_-
aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769
Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road
e-mail: dwarf@polaris.net Tallahassee, FL 32308
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