Bug#238325: Installation Report
Package: installation-reports
Debian-installer-version: March 16, 2004. sarge-i386-netinst.iso (Beta 3)
downloaded from
http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/sarge_d-i/i386/beta3/sarge-i386-netinst.iso
uname -a: Linux v8pc461 2.4.25-1-i386 #1 Tue Feb 24 8:11:13 EST 2004 i686
GNU/Linux Date: March 16, 2004, 12:00
Method: Boot from sarge-i386-netinst.iso, installed from
http://http.us.debian.org transparently http proxied
Machine: VMware 3.2.1 build 2242
Processor: Pentium 3 733Mhz
Memory: 192MB
Root Device: Vmware Emulated buslogic SCSI disk
Root Size/partition table: 6GB single partition
Output of lspci: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX -
82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (AGP disabled) (rev 01)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 08)
00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB
00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 08)
00:0f.0 VGA compatible controller: VMWare Inc: Unknown device 0405
00:10.0 SCSI storage controller: BusLogic BT-946C (BA80C30) [MultiMaster 10]
(rev 01)
00:11.0 Ethernet controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32
LANCE] (rev 10)
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [O]
Config network: [O]
Detect CD: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [O]
Create file systems: [O]
Mount partitions: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Install boot loader: [O]
Reboot: [O]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Comments/Problems:
I encountered several serious problems after the reboot which would have
caused me to abort the install and try a different distribution if I had not
been using debian for a long time and knew how to fix them manually the
problems were.
1) Inadvertently hitting ctrl+z while in nano and editing apt-sources list,
this not dropping me to a shell and hence being unable to type "fg" to
continue the install.
2) APT hanging in disk wait state after installing packages selected by
tasksel. Specifically an "apt-get clean" had hung.
3) APT hanging again after I'd restarted it installing lsb probably due to
the same problem (I didn't check).
3) XFree86 coming up in an unusable state with the display corrupted, I
think this was caused by X attempting to come up in a mode greater than that
supported by the "Monitor" section of the XF86 config file. Certainly when I
fixed the values in XF86 to be the same as the host display the problem was
solved.
I also have a number of comments on the install process compared to other
distributions.
1) There are too many different options at the end of the install for
installing groups of packages. Allowing the user to choose aptitude,
dselect, tasksel etc at this point is no appropriate. The user should just
be dumped into tasksel and told they can run any of the others after the
install has completed to install other packages.
2) Many questions are asked by dpkg rather than the installer while this is
good in a way it means that it is difficult to go back to a previous menu if
you get an answer to a question wrong. This is especially important for
configuring XF86 for example. The easiest way to fix this would be to insert
an "Accept or go back to the beginning of config for this package" option
for each package when dpkg is asking the questions.
-p
--
Paul Gotch
"What goes up must come down, ask any system administrator"
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