Bug#247457: Installer
Package: installation-reports
Debian-installer-version: Got image off debian ftp site, either late Tuesday May4th or early Wednesday May 5th.
uname -a: <The result of running uname -a on a shell prompt>
Date: Late May 4th to 3:50am May 5th
Method: No proxy. CD-ROM drive does not allow computer to boot, so floppy install was done. Attempted to load cd drivers and then continue from CD. This resulted in the system freezing when trying to detect network settings via DHCP. Then tried loading the network card floppy. Once this was loaded, I could connect to the ftp site to download files. More information at bottom.
Machine: IBM Personal Computer 350
Processor: Intel 166Mhz Pentium
Memory: 22? MB
Root Device: Floppy and IDE Drive.. Also used a USB Flash drive (more below)
Root Size/partition table: N/A
Output of lspci:
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [E ]
Configure network HW: [? ]
Config network: [O ]
Detect CD: [O ]
Load installer modules: [O ]
Detect hard drives: [O ]
Partition hard drives: [ ]
Create file systems: [ ]
Mount partitions: [ ]
Install base system: [ ]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Reboot: [ ]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Comments/Problems:
While the required ram is 32 megs, I think it is easily possible to install on less. If the user was allowed to choose packages to download/not download, valuable ram would be saved. For example, on my desktop, I don't need the SCSI files, or the PCMCIA files to be downloaded. Perhaps creating my own installer with an updated package list would fix this, but my other linux box had a mother board failure. Also, if I do the entire install off of diskettes, then I have no need for USB support, which would also help to save some valuable RAM.
Another option would be to allow the use of USB flash drives as a ramdrive.. My 64 Meg flash drive would be more than enough to get the install to the point where a linux swap partition could be created and used for space. Either way, if your goal is to create a very viable installer for all architectures, as you explain, then installation on under 32 megs of ram is going to needed. While this might require the use of a specially compiled, scaled down version of the installer, success can still be had.
With that said, I could use any advice anyone has on installing to this machine :)
Reply to: