Re: d-i install failure on powerbook 2400c
On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 01:25:18PM +0000, William Ross wrote:
> Hello ppc linux gurus,
>
> I have been trying to use the d-i to install debian testing on my PowerBook 2400c.
> I have run into some difficulties and hope you can help me out.
Please : 1) mail this also to debian-boot. 2) don't use beta4, but
either tc1 or the daily builds, and fill bug reports against
debian-installer if it breaks.
> Since the 2400c has no cdrom drive I have to use a network install.
> (As a side note I saw a couple of posts (http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2003/10/msg00492.html) which referred to a
> method of storing a cd-rom image on a macos (hfs) partition and mounting it through a loopback device for the linux install
> process - but no details, and I couldn't find any through searching. This might work (though testing ppc cd images are hard to
> come by (jigdo does not work on macintosh)) and if anyone knows about it please tell me more.)
Sure it does now. I burned a double DVD set last week. I could even send
you one such thing against a small contribution or something to cover
the cost of media + shipping, write me personally if you are interested.
> Since the 2400c is oldworld and I have a macos partition the best installation method should be with bootx. In the beta4 of the d-i
> there is a 'monolithic' version of the installation system, a linux kernel and a ramdisk containing the complete installation system.
monolitic are notto be used.
> do not include the monolithic version, so if the problem I have detailed below is already fixed in the installer, some method of
> creating a current monolithic ramdisk would be helpful.
>
> I cannot use the floppys to install for three reasons:
>
> 1) The root floppy from the beta4/powerpc-small set is too large to be written to floppy disk (1,508,960 bytes). Diskcopy refuses
> to try and suntar raises an 'end of disk reached' error.
This has been fixed now.
> Also, the boot image for that set doesn't work. The machine ejected it at startup so I looked at it in the macos (with the disk
> locked) and it appeared to be an empty formatted disk.
>
> 2) I could not boot from either the boot.img or ofonlyboot.img from people.debian.org/~luther/d-i/, I tried altering the images to
> work with miboot and also booting them through open-firmware but no success. If I knew how the ofonlyboot.img was intended
> to be launched through openfirmware I might have more success. The kind of info needed would be the filesystem on the disk (to
> make sure my open firmware supports it) and the name of the image on it.
Not sure about this, it should just work. Normally you put the floppy in
and it boots from it. Comments from other old world users ?
> 3) Booting from a floppy (or anything else) through open firmware is probably of no use to me anyway as debian 3.0 cannot
> initialise the 2400's pcmcia slots correctly unless the macos boot process has got a little further (its fine with miboot or bootx),
> and as there is no cd-rom drive or built-in ethernet I need my pcmcia ethernet card for the install.
Not sure, it should be possible to add the drivers fot them on a
additional floppy. We need people to test that though.
> Ok, so here is what goes wrong with the monolithic install. I'll talk you through the process:
>
> First we enter low memory mode. (The uncompressed ramdisk is 18mb and my physical ram is 48mb so I still have 30mb to play
> with which shouldn't cause too many problems.)
>
> Next it asks me to select a 'keymap to use for a usb keyboard'. The 2400c has no usb hardware, but I choose the us map and the
> keyboard works ok.
Ok.
> After this it tries to detect hardware and from console 3 it loads the usb driver ok (although this machine has no usb) but fails to
> load the floppy driver with:
> 'insmod: init_module: floppy: Device or resource busy'
> (with no floppy in the drive).
Definitively worth a debian-installer bug report.
> It does however perform the impressive feat of recognising the pcmcia slots and the ethernet card without any input from me.
> (With the 3.0 installer manual alteration the the pcmcia config.opts file was necessary for it load the driver for the slots).
> It then auto-magically sets up the network.
What about the so called netboot target, this should work there also,
normally.
> >From stable, testing and unstable, I select testing.
>
> Then it probes hardware again and again fails to load the floppy. (I don't need with this install system but it just seems a
> strange thing not to recognise.)
>
> It raises these errors as the partioner loads:
>
> /lib/partman/init.d/50lvm: 9: pvscan: not found
> /lib/partman/init.d/50lvm: 10: vgscan: not found
>
> although the partitioner itself works fine and is a massive improvement over fdisk in previous versions.
LVM stuff, should not bother you.
> OK now we install the base system.
> It works fine for ages until it sets up packages.
>
> For all of these daemons:
> cron, inetd, exim4-daemon-light, atd, sysklogd, klogd
> it raises the error:
> Warning: Fake start-stop-daemon called, doing nothing
>
> The next problem is with apt-utils:
>
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent the configuration of apt-utils:
> apt-utils depends on libdb4.2 however
> package libdb4.2 is not installed.
> leaving unconfigured
>
> There were also several packages which tried to install keymaps but failed, for example:
>
> setting up console-data, console-common
> looking for keymap to install
> NONE
>
> We are now at 70% of the base install process and it ends with: (from the 3rd console)
>
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> apt-utils
> umount: /target/dev/pts: Invalid argument
> umount: /target/dev/shm: Invalid argument
> umount: /target/proc/bus/usb: Invalid argument
>
> And the installation program says:
>
> Base system installation error
> The debootstrap program exited with an error (return value 1)
Ok, try the tc1 or daily builds, especially the netboot target in your
situation, but give the floppy a try also.
> So it seems to have failed, the installation program won't let me do anymore.
> However I look at /target and it seems to mainly be complete so I rebooted and used bootx to load the system. It mainly worked,
> although the daemons mentioned above caused error messages about them not working again. Unfortunately the pcmcia system
> does not seem to be installed at all - and is certainly not running - so I cannot really do anything. I run base-config, but it cannot
> get past setting up apt without a network.
>
>
> So I get most of the way, but not quite far enough (for me at least) to rescue it and end up with a fully functional system.
>
> Any help or suggestions on how to reattempt the install gratefully appreciated.
Hope the above helps a bit ? In any case debian-boot is more
appropriate for that.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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