Installation report
Hello All
I just bought my first amd64 machine, and I've decided to try my
favorite distro on it. So this is a report of all the problems I
encountered while trying the new debian installer. Some of my mistakes
are probably my fault, some are due to amd64 not being an official port
yet, but a couple of them are genuine bugs, and worth reporting.
So, I first built a bootable USB key using the instructions at
http://d-i.pascal.at/ and the images from
http://debian-amd64.alioth.debian.org/debian-installer/
after some simple tweaking (the initrd size given in
http://d-i.pascal.at was too small for this particular image) I've
booted it fine from the key.
OK, first bug, this one is from the installer. I use a french keyboard,
but the installer don't seem to have any keyboard layout. the keyboard
selection menu gives no choices at all, and fter skipping that stage,
the installer stays with the default BIOS keyboard...
I then went on with the installer, it took me some time to find the
correct mirror (the FAQ could be more clear on the fact that
debian-amd64.alioth.debian.org is the only mirror, pure64 is the base
directory, and only testing can be used) but once that was done, I could
go on.
BTW, unstable was the only accepted choice, is it because the installer
is not yet in testing, or is there no testing distribution at all for amd64
my hardware was properly detected, and my network card properly
configured through DHCP
second big problem, it couldn't install GRUB at all. the log message
reported that there were no vaid installation candidates. Is it a
temporary FTBFS bug, or is due to the "no amd64 grub, use the x86 one"
problem... if the installer tries to get a grub that matches the
installer's architecture, we have a problem here...
anyway, the machine I was intalling on had a working lilo, and after
rebooting into the other linux and tweaking lilo.conf, I could reboot in
the new debian system.
that's where my third problem occured. no more network. That was weird,
it had worked the first time, and the installer had properly downloaded
the dhcp module. Another weird thing I noticed was that it wanted me to
configure ppp, even if I had NOT asked for the ppp installer.
I started a console and ran dhclient from the CLI which configured my
eth0 properly...weird.
anyway. the last problem I encountered was that tasksel reported that
there were no tasks available. weird again. I thought task being virtual
were more or less arch independant...
One last question... I've left the /etc/apt/sources.list at it's
default, that is alioth/unstable. are there other sources I need to add
by hand, other things I should be aware of ?
I'll probably keep a small partition on my new drive to test the
installer on amd64 from time to time, if testing is needed...and tonight
I will give X a go... wish me luck
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