nslu2 debian installer rc1: RTC, hwclock, reseat the battery, apt-get segmentation fault
Hello,
I noticed a few reports describing some of the issues I experienced with an rc1 - I'm assuming that the things in the subject are all connected, but can't be sure. Anyhow, in case it is helpful to others I've summarized what happened with my installs.
Following a restart after a power cut the network did not start on my RC1 installed nslu2. I concluded something was corrupted during the power cut - no doubt hastily, as I now suspect that the long start-up was occuring because this was the first reboot after the install and the hwclock was wrong, my guess is it would have come back up okay if I'd waited an hour or so (see below)
The install seemed to go without a hitch, however after the first reboot, I could see the nslu2 lights doing the right thing and hear disk activity - but again no network. I assumed the disk was being checked and waited, but again the network did not come up after the disk checks finished. Too impatient? probably. Using the on-off button after the disk checks complete caused the machine to reboot normally, and this time the network was available immediately after the disk checks.
On logging in I saw the date was set at at Nov 30 1999 - reading the info on this list, I saw a recommendation to reseat the battery in order to force a reset of the RTC. I did this and rebooted (disk checked again), but the clock was still wrong.
Clutching at straws I tried apt-get update, but this complained of unmet dependencies and then errored with a segmentation fault before reporting what they were.
A quick google suggested that apt-get might have problems when the hardware clock was wrong.
So, this is what fixed things:
Set the time with date. Set the hardware clock with:
hwclock
--systohc
resolve the broken dependency (identified with aptitude) - debconf-il8n needed debconf-english
Hope that is useful to someone.
Regards
Nick
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