Re: installation stuck in loop
"Christian T. Steigies" <cts@debian.org> writes:
> Hi,
> we just got a new AMD64 box (ASUS K8V, AMD64-3000 I think) for a collegue. I
> am trying to set up debian-amd64 on it with a blank harddisk, I'll install
> debian-i386 or whatever else we want to run on it later. I downloaded
> sid-amd64-netinst.iso today (26-Aug-2004 09:41). The installation goes fine
> for a while, even the german keyboard works, but I run into troubles when
> installing the base system. It quits with some errors about exim4 and some
> other packages not being configured, /usr/bin/awk already being present and
> some warnings that /dev/pts not being unmounted properly. I think I can
> ignore the /dev warnings, I can get rid of the awk problem by just removing
> the file (it is a symlink to /etc/alternatives), and I can fix the exim4
> problem by manually chrooting to the target system, adding a real entry to
> apt/sources.list and installing libgnutls11. exim4 and friends are then
> configured correctly. However when I switch back to the first console and
> want to install grub, the installer goes one step back and installs the base
> system again. Unfortunately it seems to overwrite everything I just
> installed, and it is not installing libgnutls11, and thus exim4 can not be
> configured. How do I get out of this loop? Should I just reboot and use the
> CD as rescue image, booting from sda, or is there a better way to complete
> the installation? I never get to installing grub...
That is a major design flaw of debian-installer. If something goes
wrong you can't do the step by hand and continue with the next
one. D-I will always want to complete the failed step first.
As for the errors they are probably all related to libgnutls11. I'm
guessing previously only libgnutls10 was needed and debootstrap just
doesn't know about the change yet.
If you fix the base system by hand (and you need to do more than you
did) you can also install grub by hand on the second console and then
reboot.
> I want to install debian-i386 too, maybe I should start with that instead,
> but I wanted to give amd64 a real test by starting it from scratch with an
> empty harddisk.
>
> Christian
I would start with i386 unless you have time to wait for a fix.
MfG
Goswin
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