Bug#242128: Alpha netboot install report
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 | mjg59@srcf.ucam.org
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