Bug#156308: boot-floppies: installation on NFS root doesn't work
On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 05:01:53AM +0000, Paul Stoeber wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 08:22:21PM -0700, Chris Tillman wrote:
> > While we have had other reports of installer's chroot failing on powerpc,
> > I haven't seen that myself. Perhaps the chroot version on the installer
> > balks at nfs? Can you test whether the chroot command that is failing
> > also fails if typed directly into the shell on console 2? (Assuming
> > those debs are still laying around in /target/var/cache/apt/archives )
>
> $ chroot /target dpkg --force-depends --install /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_3.0.2_powerpc.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/base-passwd_3.4.1_powerpc.deb
> dpkg: unable to lock dpkg status database
> $ ###
>
> This is not powerpc specific. Any user who tries to install
> Debian on an NFS root will experience this, no matter what his
> machine arch.
>
> Look at dpkg-1.9.21/lib/lock.c to see where it fails.
>
> The programs rpc.lockd and rpc.statd (package nfs-common) must be
> included in the initial ramdisk and used properly. If this can't be
> done, dpkg must loosen its requirements (at least for boot-floppies),
> but I think the maintainers of dpkg don't like this (see the earlier
> messages I referenced in the original Bug#156308 message).
>
> The package nfs-common must be made part of the base installation
> (at least if the user installs Debian on an NFS root), or else
> dpkg will fail when the user makes his package selections after
> the second boot.
I apologize for not reading through the messages you referenced in the
initial bug. I think you had several good ideas; in particular using
the ramdisk for the lockfile and providing a --no-lock option for dpkg
seem like good options. Perhaps there's even a semaphore capability
in the kernel that wasn't available when dpkg was written.
Anyway, boot-floppies is now officially dead. This is definitely a
bad bug for people installing to nfs; I guess the thing to do is
document a workaround.
What would you recommend? Have nfs-common available on your boot share
so it can be manually installed into the ramdisk system sometime
before base installation?
--
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| Chris Tillman tillman@voicetrak.com |
| To Have, Give All to All (ACIM) |
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