Bug#591923: boot.img and debian-installer usb stick problem
Package: <debian-installer>
Version: <20090123lenny7>
also seems to afflict version 20090123
Hi there,
I have made a bootable usb stick for installation of debian on an acer
aspire one.
The stick boots fine but the problem arises when it searches for a
bootable ISO image.
I have to do this twice in order to find the image (not the actual
problem but still worth mentioning).
At first it responds with:
An installation step failed. You can try to run the failing item again
from the menu,
or skip it and choose something else. The failing step is:
Scan hard drive for an installer ISO image.
The second time it mentions mounting sda1 sda2 sda5 (hard disk) sdb1
(USB stick)
and the installer quickly finds the ISO image on the stick.
It does not seem to scan the harddrive at all (or probably only looks at
the root directory of the disk)
no hd. light going on and off.
It says:
The Iso file: /debian-505-i386-netinst.iso on /dev/sdb1/ (STABLE) will
be used as the
installation iso image.
Then the installation continues as usual but when the partitioning
system wants to write
to the disk (I choose guided partitioning use whole disk everything in
one directory /
but this choice doesn't matter - whatever you choose here leads towards
the same problem).
It fails with the following message:
The EXT3 file system creation in partition #1 of SCSI1 (0,0,0) (SDA) failed.
What caught my eye was when I opened a terminal and entered a mount
command without options.
Is that both /dev/sda1 (hard disk) and /dev/sdb1 (USB stick) are mounted
on the directory /hd-media.
this must have led to a problem when partitioning the hard disk because
partitioning a mounted volume
leads to trouble.
I tried unmounting the /cdrom directory wich contains the ISO image
mounted over the loop device,
which in turn is located on usb stick /dev/sdb1 then unmounting
/dev/sdb1 and then unmouting the harddisk /dev/sda1
what should remedy the problem.
And then reattaching the usb stick /dev/sdb1 and mounting the ISO on it
through the loopback back on /cdrom
so I could continue the installation.
However, this doesn't work because (speculation) the installer itself
seems to be using the /hd-media directory
wich results in a DEVICE BUSY when trying to unmount the /dev/sda1 or
/dev/sdb1 who are mounted there.
When playing around it seems that the scan hard drive for an ISO image
option
mounts everything - it expects the ISO image to be on and "forgets" to
unmount the devices where it does not find it.
Leading towards my problem.
After this option in the installer menu the whole lot gets tangled up
and I am not savvy enough to untangle it again.
I do not know if this is an acer aspire one problem or a more general
issue by lack of another laptop.
Anyway the installation from stick is rendered useless this way. Hope
this helps in fixing things.
Kind regards,
Sietze van de Burgt
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