Re: Why does dbootstrap not make a core file?

[Mark Zimmerman <mark@foresthaven.com>]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 11:09:15AM +0000, Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Thu, 2002-02-14 at 04:06, Mark Zimmerman wrote:
> > One of my tests of dbootstrap (in trying to get past the white screen
> > of death) resulted in a register dump to the screen. I was wondering
> > why it didn't dump core instead? Is this something related to how
> > dbootstrap is built or is it caused somehow by the installation
> > environment? I was hoping for a core file in case the builder could
> > make use of it.
> 
> Well, it would be easy enough to add an option to enable core dumps. 
> I'm not convinced it would be useful, though:
> 
> Dbootstrap doesn't always have a filesystem available that it can
> reasonably dump core onto.  The only place where there is likely to be
> enough space is the target install disk - this isn't accessible at all
> during the early stages of installation, and the user might well find it
> difficult to retrieve the core dump from there even if one was created -
> the machine may not have a floppy drive, and the core may be too big to
> fit on a disk anyway.  I don't think the root disk includes enough tools
> to copy the core away over the network either.
> 
> The builder should be able to use the information in the register dump
> to get a handle on the problem in most cases.  Admittedly the user may
> find transcribing it into an email a bit tedious, but at least it's
> straightforward to do.
> 
I recognize the truth of all of this in the general case, but I may be
close to becoming a special case. Since it didn't crash until I got to
the 'Install Base System' phase, I already have a working network
connection and plenty of mounted partitions. I tranferred an ftp
client and the curses and readline libraries to the system via floppy
and tried to run ftp. Unfortunately, it said:

ftp: ftp/tcp: unknown service

and quit. When I get back to working on this tonight, I'll try copying
libc also and/or look for an appropriate kernel module to load.

Anyhow, if I can get ftp working, that will open up some
possibilities:

1. Acquire or build a debug version of dbootstrap and see what
   happens.
2. ftp the base_system.tgz file to the hard drive and try to install
   from there. By the way, the current woody installation manual does
   not have a link to such a file. Is there one somewhere?

-- Mark