--- Begin Message ---
Package: installation-reports
Debian-installer-version:
cdimage-testing/daily/i386/20040820/sarge-i386-netinst.iso
uname -a : i dont think busybox has that...
Date : Sat Aug 21 19:51:17 CEST 2004
Method : install from netinst image on homebaked cdrom
Machine : pc
Processor: yes
Memory : 196M
Root Device: i dont know what you mean by that
Root Size/partition table: see furtheron
Output of lspci and lspci -n: irrelevant
Base System Installation Checklist:
[K] = OK, [anything else] = Error (elaborated below), [ ] = didn't try it
Initial boot worked: [K]
Configure network HW: [K]
Config network: [K]
Detect CD: [K]
Load installer modules: [K]
Detect hard drives: [K]
Partition hard drives: [E]
Create file systems: [E]
Mount partitions: [?]
Install base system: [ ]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Reboot: [K]
Comments/Problems:
<Description of the install, in prose,
and thoughts you had during the initial install, if any.>
couldnt read install howto with browser. maybe alioth was down ?
Si:/# wget -O /my/installer.img --progress=dot:mega \
http://cdimage.debian.org/\
pub/cdimage-testing/daily/i386/20040820/sarge-i386-netinst.iso
verified md5sum
burned cdrom
mounted cdrom
/cdrom/README.txt :
Intro:
Debian is a very extensive collection of software. But it is more. It
is a complete Operating System (OS) for your computer. And it is free
s:an operating system is not (necessarily) more than
an extensive software collection, and debian is more than
an operating system, as it contains lots of application programs ,
so maybe refrase as:
Debian is a very extensive collection of software. It includes a
complete Operating System (OS) for your computer. And it is free
About This CD:
CD contains the most popular programs and the installation tools; it
is possible to install and run Debian with only the Binary-1 CD. The
other CDs, up to Binary-1, contain mostly special-interest programs.
s: ah, now i see which other CDs you mean :-)
/cdrom/doc/bug-log-access :
last time i tried install, i noticed package apt-listbugs,
which finds any grave bugreports,
and notifies user before these packages are installed,
giving them opportunity to pin buggy packages.
maybe add a note about this ? it saved me from installing ca. 10 packages.
Sat Aug 21 19:51:17 CEST 2004
shutdown -r now
rebooted into installer
@ logo screen press F1 (overlooked this last time)
help says this cd was built on 20040819,
but readme.txt and name of iso image say 20040820
i read all help pages. they seem ok.
no mention of how to navigate menus here.
i boot with 'expert26'
while installing, help through F1 key is not available
i do have busybox on VT2; this was not mentioned anywhere that i looked
i also have messages on VT4
@'choose a country' :
why stupid 2-level list ?
'select a keyboard'
only 2 options now ? (pc and usb). well, if it works...
i chuid to foo| ; "foo or nothing" is my devise.
'start pc card services ?'
i never heard of that, so i go with default: 'yes',
maybe it'll give me pcmcia; i heard others have that.
"CDROM detected. the installation will now continue"
ok. no need to press enter then.
.....
installation proceeds quietly, but without visual output,
so i decide to interrupt process by pressing enter.
"load installer components"
just to be on safe side, i select them all.
"start pc card services ?"
is asked again, this time in a box called 'detect network hardware'
ofcourse i go with default again.
"some modules are not available right now"
apparently it wants me to go on regardless,
so why make me regard this notion ?
i choose eth1 as default NIC, because i recognize '8139',
haha! users with identical NICs will be surprised here !
hostname defaults to 'c529da352' gotten from dhcp
i am setting up my own home network
(why did you think i would be setting up somebody else's home network ?)
so i change this to 'Si'.
"the domain name is
the part of the internet address to the right of your hostname"
says next screen, but this is impossible,
since i only have an numeric ip address,
so i go with default 'wanadoo.nl'.
ssh wants _me_ to specify a tmeporary pasword for installer.
cant you use a random password for that,
maybe based on date of /proc or something ?
"to continue the installation,
please use an ssh client to log in as the 'installer' user"
if you think i'm gonna copy that long key with pencil and paper,
you are severely mistaken !
(i used a ballpoint pen)
i select download with ftp
as mirror i select ftp.de.debian.org
i elected to be consulted about which mirror to use in a previous phase,
so this is very satisfactory.
i choose to install testing
next step is 'free memory'
it runs silently. did it do anything ?
"start pc card services ?"
you mean you still havent started them !?! very bad !!!
"unable to load some modules"
so what ?
partitioning disks:
configure software raid:
(i dont know anything about software rade, so i take defaults)
create md device:
choose type:
"no raid partitions available"
infinite loop to 'create md device'
which i cunningly break by selecting 'delete md device'
delete md device:
that gets me right back to where i was, so i try 'finish'
finish:
"starting up the partitioner"
i thought that had already been done ?!
configure lvm:
default 'no' took me right back to where i started from.
useless crap.
guided partitioning:
"partitioning hard drive consists of dividing it..."
maybe refrase that as
"...consists of marking parts of space on it as reserved,
to reserve space for your new Debian system." ?
installer doesnt allow to overwrite linux partitions that have data on it,
it says; does it allow to overwrite windows partitions ?
or any other kinds of partitions ?
if so, a warning should be added !
although partitioner still doesnt show labels in partition table,
i remember that i used hda16 to store partial archive,
so i plan to put root on hda17.
i copy hda11 to hda17.
nice feature for a rescue disk :-)
this takes a couple of minutes
i estimate 10MB/s . disknoises indicate ca. 2 blocks per second.
disk has 2 MB internal cache.
do you use dma ?
i delete partitions 19,20, and 21
i create some new partitions at end.
when being asked for size of partitions,
format to specify in is not specified in.
i enter "10 MB" ; partition created turns out as 8.1 MB. sloppy !
entering "1","1 MB","8.5 MB","0","0.01 MB","0.01 GB","."17.7 kB"
all result in a 8.1 MB partition.
i admire simplicity of your software :-)
even entering ".00000 etc 09000 etc etc 001" (1 minute autorepeating 0s)
defaulted to 8.1 MB !
entering "0x3","-1","3 MMB" are considered invalid.
i would have simply defaulted these to 8.1 MB too,
but tastes differ, i suppose.
nice touch that magical 8.1 by the way.
entering "117.7 GB" makes it respond with
"ERROR! can't have partitions outside of disk"
i never asked for that ofcourse, so it is not my error,
and it is clearly confused,
as it proceeds to compute new state of partition table,
while nothing changed at all.
i tried creating a compressed filesystem
by copying partition 11 to one of new partitions
but apparently installer is not as modern as me yet,
as it reports :
"Not yet implemented.
Direct support for copying filesystems is not yet implemented for ext2.
However support for resizing implemented.
Therefore the filesystem can be copied
if the new partition is at least as big as the old one.
So either shrink the partition you are trying to copy,
or copy to a bigger partition."
i particularly like this
'our software is translated in low-wage countrys' feel here,
it makes it look very professional, like proprietary systems.
and another nice feature is idea to tell them to shrink partitions
(no telling what's on them, ofcourse).
sleek !
after a lot of waiting for slow partitioner,
i finally have selected following partition table :
partiti size use mount fsflags (bootflag)
1 100M e2
2 4G e3
3 100M swap
4 4G e2
5 4G e2
6 4G e2
7 4G e2
8 4G e2
9 4G e2
10 4G e2
11 4G e2
12 4G swap
13 4G e2
14 4G e2
15 4G e2
16 4G e2
17 4G e2
18 4G e3
19 4G fat16 /
-free- 17.5G
50 8M raid
49 8M lvm
48 8M xfs /
47 8M reiser / usrquota,grpquota
46 8M jfs / noatime,nodev,nosuid,noexec,sync
45 8M fat32 / quiet
44 8M e3 /
43 8M e3 /my
42 8M swap swap (bootable)
41 8M e3 /
40 8M e3 /
39 8M e3 /
38 8M
37 8M
36 8M
35 8M
34 8M
33 8M
32 8M
31 8M
30 8M
-free- 8M
29 8M
28 8M
27 8M
26 8M
25 8M
24 16M
23 8M
22 8M
21 8M
20 8M
so far, our installer is doing well ! :-)
but then your installer starts failing :
"fat16 creation in part 19 failed" -> changed it to ext2 on /tmp
"fat32 creation in part 45 failed" -> changed it's mountpoint to /dos
it still fails -> changed it to dontuse
"jfs creation in part 46 failed" -> changed it to dontuse
"reiserfs creation in part 47 failed"-> changed it to dontuse
"xfs creation in part 48 failed" -> changed it to dontuse
and it complains about partitions having same mountpoint !
i read that i need at least 24 MB,
so if i cant have at least 3 partitions on /
then it aint my fault if installation doesnt work !
"part 39 and part 41 have same mountpoint (/)"
i manage to work around by mounting partition 41 on /tmp/..
observe this good programming here.
working around bugs is good, because it gets results fast,
that's what brings down the bacon in the end !
i similarly work around partitions 39,40 and 44
by mounting 2 of them on // and /// .
"mounting part3 as swap on none failed"
try to mount it as none on none then, i'lld say.
i decide to work around by setting it to dontuse.
i select "partition a harddisk",
but it fails, and selecting it again it still fails.
so i coolly look at end of menu list,
which is obvious place that everyone would expect to find access to a shell,
but it doesnt have cfdisk, so i cant repair.
then i select 'save debug logs'
but it doesnt work, because it expects a floppy !
dont you know that you shouldnt press floppys in a cdrw drive ?
so i power down,
only to be greeted with same installer again !
whole computer has become unusable !
Sat Aug 21 23:50:24 CEST 2004
installation failed miserably. reporting it !
one failure after another !
i hope you realize that this clearly shows that
you are so incredibly incompetent
that i am relatively superior !
you'll hear from my loyers about this !
(they are debian fans too,
at least if i had any lawyers,
i would surely select them from debian-lex mailinglist)
/chuid
installer seems fairly robust,
but not completely foo| proof yet.
you sure got 'edit mount point' in there fast !
a lot faster than i could have done it.
few obvious bugs here,
this time i noticed that it tried to mount swap on none
perhaps failure to create filesystems is due to parition size ?
i would have liked to see it give reason for failure
but fat16 should have worked.
and ability to toggle bootable flag is useless for linux,
while changing it is fatal for windows, if dualbooting
doesnt bootloader set it automatically ?
and partitioner failing without errormessage is not good
for unreasonable demands made on it here,
it proved to remain safe :
it didnt overwrite MBR and partition table remained intact.
i am running woody on part 10 again now,
here is output of cfdisk :
Name Flags Part Type FSType [Label] Size (MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
hda1 Primary Linux ext2 [/boot] 98.71
hda2 Primary Linux ext3 [woody2] 3997.49
hda3 Primary Linux swap 98.71
hda5 Logical Linux ext2 [Potato5] 3997.49
hda6 Logical Linux ext2 [/home] 3997.49
hda7 Logical Linux ext2 [/my] 3997.49
hda8 Logical Linux ext2 [Woody8] 3997.49
hda9 Logical Linux ext3 [Woody9kde] 3997.49
hda10 Logical Linux ext2 [Woody10] 3997.49
hda11 Logical Linux ext2 [Sarge11] 3997.49
hda12 Logical Linux swap 3997.49
hda13 Logical Linux ext2 [Reunie] 3997.49
hda14 Logical Linux ext2 [Sound] 3997.49
hda15 Logical Linux ext3 [Redhat15] 3997.49
hda16 Logical Linux ext2 [Apt Cache] 3997.49
hda17 Logical Linux ext2 [Sarge11] 3997.49
hda18 Logical Linux ext3 3997.49
Logical Free Space 17528.08
hda50 Logical Linux raid autodetect 8.23
hda49 Logical Linux LVM 8.23
hda48 Logical Linux 8.23
hda47 Logical Linux 8.23
hda46 Logical Linux 8.23
hda45 Logical Win95 FAT32 (LBA) 8.23
hda44 Logical Linux ext3 [/] 8.23
hda43 Logical Linux ext3 [/my] 8.23
hda42 Boot Logical Linux swap 8.23
hda41 Logical Linux ext3 [/] 8.23
hda40 Logical Linux ext3 [/] 8.23
hda39 Logical Linux ext3 [/] 8.23
hda38 Logical Linux 8.23
hda37 Logical Linux 8.23
hda36 Logical Linux 8.23
hda35 Logical Linux 8.23
hda34 Logical Linux 8.23
hda33 Logical Linux 8.23
hda32 Logical Linux 8.23
hda31 Logical Linux 8.23
hda30 Logical Linux 8.23
Logical Free Space 8.23
hda29 Logical Linux 8.23
hda28 Logical Linux 8.23
hda27 Logical Linux 8.23
hda26 Logical Linux 8.23
hda25 Logical Linux 8.23
hda24 Logical Linux 16.46
hda23 Logical Linux 8.23
hda22 Logical Linux 8.23
hda21 Logical Linux 8.23
hda20 Logical Linux 8.23
do you people forward parts of installreports
if they show bugs in base-install or elsewhere ?
or am i to file such reports ?
and wishlists like devicenodes for all partitions ?
i hope this report is of use to you.
thanks for your good work, and have a lot of nice days :-)
Siward "foo|" de Groot
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
the bacon doesnt fall far from the tree
--- End Message ---