[potato] an installation report

[Marcin Owsiany <porridge@pandora.info.bielsko.pl>]

Version: 22.07.2000 from CVS

These are some (minor) problems I noticed during a few debug verbose
installs.

1).

before dbootstrap's start threre appear LOTS of "modprobe: modprobe: Can't
open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.2.17/modules.dep (No such file or
directory)"

(They appear just before
init started: BusyBox v043 ....
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0.)

Probably at the same time "kmod: runaway modprobe loop assumed and stopped"
appears at tty4

2).

After choosing "select an NFS server": when there is no network configured,
some scraps of messages appear (only a few letters are visible, in fact),
immediately covered by menu box.

  +--------------------+
  |   ,------------.   |
  |   |  menu      |p (|
  |No |    here    |   |
  |   `------------'   |
  +--------------------+

BTW: "select an NFS server" wasn't _()-ed, so I did that

3).

While deciding where to install LILO, shouldn't the message
"Install LILO in the /target boot sector."  contain partition name instead
of the mount point?

4).
some messages after reboot:

[...]
Running dns-clean.
chmod: /etc/resolv.conf: No such file or directory
[...]
insmod: /lib/modules/2.2.17/misc/unix.o: cannot create
/var/log/ksymoops/20000725001759.ksyms Read-only filesystem
[...]
INIT: Entering runlevel:2
[...]
Starting PCMCIA services: modules/lib/modules/2.2.17/pcmcia/i82365.o
init_module: Device or resource busy
Hint: this error can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including
 invalid IO or IRQ parameters
ds: no socket drivers loaded!
/lib/modules/2.2.17/pcmcia/ds.o: init_module: Device or resource busy
Hint: this error can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including
 invalid IO or IRQ parameters
cardmgr.
[...]

I do not have PCMCIA on that system. Maybe /etc/init.d/pcmcia should check
if "configure PCMCIA" was chosen during dbootstrap?

5).

wnen I did not configure my network card (i.e. did not load appropriate
module driver) the following appears at the end:

Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (null)
(null) login:

and /etc/hosts contains only:
127.0.0.1	(null) localhost

6).

During second installation I wanted to get a closer look at how the messages
during modules and kernel installation looked like, which revealed, that
some problems appear when installing kernel/modules twice:

(arrows show installing kernel/modules and running modconf)

----->	installing kernel and modules from /target/D/debian
	 running cmd 'mount -r -t msdos /dev/loop0 /floppy'
	 running cmd './install.sh /target'
	 running cmd 'umount /floppy'
	 running cmd 'zcat /target/D/debian/drivers.tgz | tar -x'
	 running cmd './install.sh /target'
	kernel and modules install successful
----->	installing kernel and modules from /target/D/debian
	 running cmd 'mount -r -t msdos /dev/loop0 /floppy'
	 running cmd './install.sh /target'
	 running cmd 'umount /floppy'
	 ioctl: LOOP_CLR_FD: Device or resource busy
	 running cmd 'zcat /target/D/debian/drivers.tgz | tar -x'
	 running cmd './install.sh /target'
	kernel and modules install successful
----->	 running cmd 'depmod -a'
	/lib/modules/boot: Too many levels of symbolic links
	depmod: Can't open /lib/modules/2.2.17/modules.dep for writing

Doing ls -al on VT2 shows:
/lib/modules -> /target/lib/modules /target/lib/modules -> ...

7).

There is no "have fun" screen if you: [Q]uit dselect without using any of
it's options
(preceding actions are:
 remove pcmcia packages
 do not use a PPP connection
 edit sources by hand
 quit ae (i.e. everything is commented-out)
 no apt sources
 "advanced"
 and probably most important: [Q]uit dselect without using any of it's options

let's fix the above and the installer will be perfect :-)
good job!

regards
Marcin

-- 
+--------------------------------+ The reason we come up with new versions
|Marcin Owsiany                  | is not to fix bugs. It's the stupidest
|porridge@pandora.info.bielsko.pl| reason to buy a new version
+--------------------------------+ I ever heard.            - Bill Gates