Bug#249313: [d-i-alpha] debian-installer report

[Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com>]

Package: installation-reports

----- Forwarded message from "B. Peccatte" <benoit.peccatte@tele2.fr> -----

From: "B. Peccatte" <benoit.peccatte@tele2.fr>
Subject: debian-installer report
Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 19:20:12 +0200
To: debian-boot@lists.debian.org
User-Agent: KMail/1.6.2


I tried to install an alpha station using the debian installer. Here are the 
problems I noticed. Note that I still can't get to the end of the 
installation process.

Note that I've got a 1GB hard drive and 72MB of RAM and I'm using the french 
translation for installation.

I want to boot from network as I've got nothing else to boot : no CD drive and 
the flopppy drive is not working properly. I setup tftp and bootp server. 

Then I don't know how to get a bootable kernel as the debian installer build 
produces a vmlinuz which isn't directly bootable from the network on alpha.
I got a correct one thanks Steve Langasek. 

When it comes to network hardware detection, I see that more than half of the 
time is spent detecting ide and scsi devices (it's a bit long on my old 
alpha) moreover this will be done again later. Then I get a problem with my 
network card, it's due to the 2.4 kernel which doesn't handle 21040 properly 
(tulip driver). Hopefully I got another one.

Then its comes to partitionning, first the help on lvm isn't translated in 
french. Then I couldn't install in lvm because I couldn't find any way to 
create a physical volume. I chose to partition the disk by hand.

Something weird is that the menu label saying that we're finished with 
partitioning is a the top of the menu. 
Well it was my second try and after modifing nothing except affecting / to the 
first partition, I get a warning message asking me if I wanted to validate 
changes on hard drive partition. Pretty disturbing. 
As a note for french translators, there is a {MOUNT_POINT} in the formating 
progress bar, I think a $ is missing.

After this I typed "df" in the console just to see what was happening and I 
saw that I got about 100 000TB in hard drive and about 6 000TB in an shm 
partition !!

There is also an apt-get install e2fsprog libc6.1 ... which doesn't have any 
progress bar, this is dirturbing to have a blue screen to look for, waiting 
for a movement.

Moreover note that in case of error, go back and continue often have the same 
meaning, I couldn't see the differences.

Here starts the problems I tried multiple times, but it fails here : after 
downloading packages it produces an error on the third console and never goes 
farther. Substiancially, it says : 
ln : /target/usr/bin/awk : file exists
/target/dev/pts no such file or directory
/target/dev/shm no such file or directory
/target/proc/bus/usb no such file or directory

Note that /target/proc isn't mounted.


I hope this wasn't too long and that it can be useful for you. 
I don't know which of these are bugs or my fault, so I give it to you as a 
pack. May I fill bugs for some ?

All I can't say is that this installer is a great job and I will be happy to 
try it again.
Have a good day

B. Peccatte


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-- 
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com