Bug#267515: Installer RC1 [fails on older ISA SCSI boards]
Package: installation-reports
Debian-installer-version: RC1
uname -a: N/A
Date: 8/22/2004 2140 EDT
Method: How did you install? Tried both CD and network.
What did you boot off? Floppy
If network install, from where? ftp://debian.uchicago.edu Proxied? No.
Connected through masquerading hardware firewall box.
Machine: Compaq Deskpro
Processor: Pentium 1 133 MHz
Memory: 32 MB
Root Device: SCSI? Yes. Name of device? /dev/sda3
Root Size/partition table:
/dev/sda1 50 MB /boot
/dev/sda2 268 MB swap
/dev/sda3 1.8 GB /
/dev/sdb1 839 MB /var
/dev/sdb2 1.3 GB /home
Output of lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 430HX - 82439HX TXC [Triton II] (rev 01)
0000:00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21041 [Tulip Pass 3] (rev 11)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
0000:00:0f.0 VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 5436 [Alpine]
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [O]
Config network: [O]
Detect CD: [E]
Load installer modules: [O/E]
Detect hard drives: [E]
Partition hard drives: [ ]
Create file systems: [E]
Mount partitions: [ ]
Install base system: [ ]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Reboot: [ ]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Comments/Problems:
The basic problem that showed up here is that D-I doesn't know what to do
with a device that can't be auto-detected. A lot of contemporary installers
are like that. If the device isn't automatically detected, the installer
doesn't automatically load its driver module.
Unfortunately, it doesn't ask the user whether any modules need to be
loaded manually. Older installers did this, when ISA devices that couldn't
be auto-detected were common. For example, Red Hat 4.0 had dialogues asking
whether there were any SCSI devices, and if so, what kind of board, I/O
address, and interrupt line. The need for this has not gone away, and it
will never go away.
To put this in perspective, the machine has a non-bootable SCSI CD-ROM and
two SCSI hard disks, all connected to an AHA-1542 ISA non-PNP SCSI host
adapter. There is also an IDE disk, but that is not the install target.
The target drives presently run Sarge, installed by first installing
Libranet 2.7 on the IDE drive, then cross-installing Woody from the network
to the SCSI drives and upgrading to Sarge. So the hardware all works, and
has been for years. LN 2.7 or RH 6.2 boots from floppy and installs from
CD.
1. Booted OK from the RC1 floppy set. First tried the CD drivers floppy.
Failed to detect CD; no activity lights on SCSI bus. lsmod didn't show the
aha1542 driver. Checked /lib/modules/2.4.26-1-386/kernel/drivers/scsi.
aha1542.o was not present. No Adaptec driver modules were present.
This is fatal to any attempt to install from a SCSI CD drive.
Went back to "Load drivers from a floppy". Read in the drivers from the
network driver floppy. Still no Adaptec drivers.
2. Continued on to attempt a network install.
The command line to start the installation had been
expert netcfg/disable_dhcp=true
but the option had no effect. The installer still asked if DCHP should be
tried. I said no.
It started up a dialog to configure a static IP address. It didn't ask
which of the 3 Ethernet interfaces on the machine should be used. I had to
move cables around until I found which one it had made eth0. Otherwise,
configuration was successful. Apparently, it auto-detected the Tulip PCI
board, but didn't detect either of the two NE-2000 clone ISA PNP boards, and
didn't ask whether there were any other network interface boards.
3. During "Loading components of the Debian Installer" it hung at 46%,
"Retrieving md-modules". Killing the wget process and re-trying got it
going again. It hung at random places just about every time on previous d-i
betas.
4. The partitioner started up. It displayed only the partitions on the IDE
disk. No activity lights flashed on the SCSI bus. lsmod showed some
scsi-related modules loaded, but not aha1542. This time it was present in
the /lib tree. Commanded
modprobe aha1542
The partitioner still displayed only the IDE partitions.
Went back to "Detect hardware". No SCSI activity.
Tried partitioner. No disk partitions at all were displayed.
Tried fdisk. It couldn't detect any disks at all.
---------------------------------
5. Re-ran it, without using the CD drivers floppy this time.
The "Loading components" download hung at a different spot, otherwise same.
Executed the modprobe command before starting the partitioner for the first
time.
The partitioner listed all three drives. fdisk didn't detect any.
/dev/sda1 50 MB /boot
/dev/sda2 268 MB swap
/dev/sda3 1.8 GB /
/dev/sdb1 839 MB /var
/dev/sdb2 1.3 GB /home
Tried to select /dev/sdb so a filesystem could be created in it for a new
installation. System hung with a blue screen on console #1.. Last message
on console #3 was
insmod isofs
No matching physical volumes found
No volume groups found
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
Last message on console #4 was
Aug 22 22:49:25 main-menu[376]: DEBUG: virtual package harddrive-detection
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