Bug#251825: Installing sarge PPC kernel with d-i fails with initrd warning

[John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>]

> > *** I'm beginning to think that the root of my problems is that the d-i
> > team is building their own CD's, and never noticing the official CDs
> > that the debian-cd team is building.  So the "official" CDs don't ever
> > get tested by the d-i team.  Perhaps?  ***
> 
> The problem is a bit more complicated. There are CDs built out of sarge
> and Cds built out of sid. and there is the daily built d-i and the one
> uploaded to sarge, and ...
> 
> Actually, the best way to install is to use the beta4 CDs, and then use
> whatever .deb source you like for the post reboot install.

Thanks!  It worked.

I just did a successful install using the "110MB" beta4 d-i netinst CD.
It did a quick install of the base packages, installed a good kernel,
and rebooted without trouble.  Then came an hour of downloading, and
even more time of alternating between answering silly questions and
waiting for silly questions to suddenly pop up.  The X server isn't
working yet, but that isn't your problem.

So I guess there are two issues I'd still like to resolve with the d-i
and debian-cd teams:

  *  The version of d-i that's on the debian-cd Sarge CD #1 doesn't
     let you configure a network interface, or pick any network sources
     of .debs, unless you run it in expert mode.  This makes problems
     like "no working kernel on the boot CD" fatal, because it won't use
     the net as a backup source of .debs.

  *  There seems to be no way to successfully install Sarge on a modern
     Mac using the debian-cd CD's.  CD #1 doesn't include a working
     kernel, and debian-installer never provides an option to change
     CD's to let me insert a different CD that contains a working
     kernel.

Since presumably the average user is going to install using the global
debian-cd images, rather than by picking up a beta CD from the d-i
project, these things should probably get fixed in the global images.

	John

PS: Jens Schmalzing <j.s@lmu.de> proposed that I just ignore Sarge.
What's the point of having a testing distribution if nobody tests it
and reports the bugs in it?  Also, I thought 'testing' was going to be
more stable than the 'unstable' distribution.  If there really is no
actual point to Sarge, then rather than misleading newcomers to Debian
with three distributions, the whole Debian project should just offer
two: working but ancient (which in my case doesn't even support my
hardware), and bleeding-edge.