Re: Are boot floppies broken?

[Jukka Neppius <jkn@softavenue.fi>]

Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> writes:

> Jukka Neppius wrote:
> > Is there any reason to test these?  I haven't succeeded with boot
> > floppies since December.
> 
> You're guaranteed to fail right now with them unless you tell the
> installer to install unstable. Same as netboot.

First I tried to install testing with floppies from
Debian/dists/testing/... Failure..  Then I tried to install testing
with daily boot-floppies.  Failed.  After that I have tried to install
unstable with different daily images from
http://people.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i/images/ I have failed at least 5
times (perhaps 10, I have not counted).  Has anyone succeeded with
boot floppies?  In December I installed testing with floppies, but now
it seems impossible.




> I test them from time to time in vmware. Have not booted a physical
> floppy since November, thank god.


That is not so terrible, since only two floppies are needed.  I have
installed Slackware from floppies only.  Only few years ago I had to
install old SYSV Unix from floppies.  


Latest test:

2004-02-25/build_floppy_root.log:
  mcopy -i./tmp/floppy/root/root.img ./tmp/floppy/root/initrd.gz ::initrd.gz
  Disk full
  make[2]: *** [arch_root] Error 1
  make[1]: *** [_build] Error 2
  make: *** [build_floppy_root] Error 2


Looks so bad that I didn't try these.

------------------------------------------------------------

2004-02-24/build_floppy_root.log:
  at ./tmp/floppy/root/all.utf | LOCPATH=./tmp/floppy/root/tree/usr/lib/locale LC
  _ALL=C.UTF-8 reduce-font /usr/src/unifont.bdf > ./tmp/floppy/root/unifont.bdf
  setlocale: C.UTF-8
  FYI: MB_CUR_MAX/MB_LEN_MAX: 6/16
  error -1 at position 579622 (bytes: 16 Used chars: 1612 (579622 processed)
  make[3]: *** [tmp/floppy/root/tree/unifont.bgf] Error 1
  make[2]: *** [tmp/floppy/root/initrd.gz] Error 2
  make[1]: *** [_build] Error 2
  make: *** [build_floppy_root] Error 2


Not much better...

------------------------------------------------------------

2004-02-23 

Log files look OK!!!  I haven't seen this since 2004-02-11
(I haven't checked every day)  BUT:


The specified Debian archive mirror is either not available, or does
not have a valid Release file on it. Please try a different mirror

Perhaps this is too old...

------------------------------------------------------------

I tried also sid-20040209

/var/log/messages:
tar: Unrecognised file type

I think this is known and solved bug.

------------------------------------------------------------


http://people.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i/images/2004-02-26/build_floppy_root.log
  mcopy -i./tmp/floppy/root/root.img ./tmp/floppy/root/initrd.gz ::initrd.gz
  Disk full
  make[2]: *** [arch_root] Error 1
  make[1]: *** [_build] Error 2
  make: *** [build_floppy_root] Error 2


Nothing to test today...

- Jukka