Bug#156308: boot-floppies: installation on NFS root doesn't work
On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 08:22:21PM -0700, Chris Tillman wrote:
> While we have had other reports of installer's chroot failing on powerpc,
> I haven't seen that myself. Perhaps the chroot version on the installer
> balks at nfs? Can you test whether the chroot command that is failing
> also fails if typed directly into the shell on console 2? (Assuming
> those debs are still laying around in /target/var/cache/apt/archives )
$ chroot /target dpkg --force-depends --install /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_3.0.2_powerpc.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/base-passwd_3.4.1_powerpc.deb
dpkg: unable to lock dpkg status database
$ ###
This is not powerpc specific. Any user who tries to install
Debian on an NFS root will experience this, no matter what his
machine arch.
Look at dpkg-1.9.21/lib/lock.c to see where it fails.
The programs rpc.lockd and rpc.statd (package nfs-common) must be
included in the initial ramdisk and used properly. If this can't be
done, dpkg must loosen its requirements (at least for boot-floppies),
but I think the maintainers of dpkg don't like this (see the earlier
messages I referenced in the original Bug#156308 message).
The package nfs-common must be made part of the base installation
(at least if the user installs Debian on an NFS root), or else
dpkg will fail when the user makes his package selections after
the second boot.
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