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Bug#244294: Installation report for Sparcstation 10 (netboot, serial console)



Package: installation-reports

INSTALL REPORT

Debian-installer-version: http://people.debian.org/~jbailey/d-i/sparc/2004-04-17/sparc32/netboot/boot.img
uname -a: Linux snoopy 2.4.24-sparc32 #1 Fri Jan 30 16:04:55 EST 2004 sparc GNU/Linux
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2004
Method: Over serial console, by netbooting from a PC with rarpd and tftpd.

Machine: Sparcstation 10 (sun4m).
Processor: SuperSPARC TMS390
Memory: 80MB
Root Device: SCSI drive, Seagate ST1480N, 437 MB, /dev/sda
Root Size/partition table: output of fdisk -l /dev/sda:
Disk /dev/sda (Sun disk label): 9 heads, 80 sectors, 1018 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 720 * 512 bytes

   Device Flag    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1             0       814    293040    1  Boot
/dev/sda2           814       923     39240   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda3             0      1018    366480    5  Whole disk
/dev/sda4           923      1018     34200   83  Linux native

Output of lspci:
pcilib: Cannot open /sys/bus/pci/devices
pcilib: Cannot open /proc/bus/pci
lspci: Cannot find any working access method.

Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Initial boot worked:    [O]
Configure network HW:   [O]
Config network:         [O]
Detect CD:              [O] (no CD is present in the system)
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives:     [O]
Partition hard drives:  [O]
Create file systems:    [O]
Mount partitions:       [O]
Install base system:    [E] (see comment [1] below)
Install boot loader:    [O]
Reboot:                 [E] (see comment [2] below)

Comments/Problems:

[1] One minor problem which I encountered is triggered, when the chosen
    mirror is bad (in my case the mirror I have chosen did not carry sparc
    packages). I was then presented by a screen with an informational
    message and three options: "Retry", "Change mirror", and "Cancel".
    When choosing "Cancel", I was returned back to the very same screen
    (does not seem correct), but I was able to get out using the
    "Change mirror" option.
[2] A more serious problem occured after reboot. Even though I was installing
    over a serial console, installer failed to recognize it, it seems. It
    activated the usual 6 virtual consoles, however failed to activate
    one for a serial port. As a result after the completion of configuration
    I received a bunch of messages from init about getty respawning too
    quickly and was left without a working console to login. Booting manually
    with init=/bin/sh and editing inittab to start an mgetty on a serial
    console fixed the problem.

One more minor quirk which I've noticed is an error message from apt-setup
(package base-config). The problem is the code snippet from it around line
326:

                   if [ -n $COUNTRY ]; then
                     db_set apt-setup/country $COUNTRY
                   fi

For multi-word country names (like US, for example) this will produce an error:

/usr/sbin/apt-setup: line 326: [: United: binary operator expected

The correct way is to surround references to $COUNTRY by quotes. I'll file
a bug about it for base-config.

Best regards,

Jurij Smakov                                        jurij@wooyd.org
Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/                   KeyID: C99E03CC



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