Bug#226057: Installer doesn't handle the DMA-disabling boot options
Package: installation-reports
Version: 20040103
Debian-installer-version: sarge-i386-netinst.iso from
http://people.debian.org/~manty/testing/netinst/i386/20040103/
Also applies to the copies of sarge-i386-netinst.iso
from
http://people.debian.org/~manty/testing/netinst/i386/daily/
dated 2004-01-01 and 2003-12-31
Date: Jan. 3, 2004, 8:00 p.m.
Method: Booted from CD burned from
sarge-i386-netinst.iso
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [ ]
Config network: [ ]
Detect CD: [ ]
Load installer modules: [E]
Detect hard drives: [ ]
Partition hard drives: [ ]
Create file systems: [ ]
Mount partitions: [ ]
Install base system: [ ]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Reboot: [O]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] =
didn't try it
Deja vu all over again. The following may be familiar
to you.
Whenever I have attempted to install, I get this error
message:
"The integrity check for <FOO> failed. It is most
likely corrupt. Aborting."
After that, I can reboot and get back to my old
system.
where <FOO> varies from one attempted install to the
next, sometimes "base-installer," or
"baseconfig-udeb," or "bterm-unifont."
To check the integrity of the CD that I burned, I ran
"dd if=/dev/cdrom
of=/tmp/copy-of-sarge-i386-netinst.iso" and checked to
see if the MD5SUM of copy-of-sarge-i386-netinst.iso
matched that of the original sarge-i386-netinst.iso
that I burned to the CD. It did. I also made sure that
the diff command reported no difference between
copy-of-sarge-i386-netinst.iso and
sarge-i386-netinst.iso.
End of the deja vu, now for the new stuff.
Once I saw the error message, I switched to another
virtual terminal and ran "dmesg | grep hdb". One of
the lines read
hdb: ATAPI 6x CD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache, DMA
^^^
This explains everything. I know from experience that
a good way to read garbage from my CD-ROM is to try to
access it via DMA. (That is a good way to read garbage
from most older ATAPI devices, as I'm sure you know. )
I bet that what's going on is that when udebs are read
from the CD-ROM, sooner or later, one of them is read
wrong, which is probably why the integrity check
fails.
What's really wrong with this picture is that passing
the standard-issue kernel option "ide=nodma" doesn't
work. "dmesg | grep hdb" still reports the same thing.
This is not good. (Yes, at the boot prompt, I type
"linux ide=nodma", not just "ide=nodma".)
A good question is why DMA is enabled for ATAPI
devices at all, since Debian is supposed to be
installable on older hardware, which is where DMA
problems tend to crop up.
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