Bug#268792: [m68k] [20040828, rc1(?)] [nativehd] Failure with Debian installer RC1 on Macintosh Quadra650
Package: installation-reports
Debian-installer-version: 20040828-nativehd from
http://people.debian.org/~smarenka/d-i/images-m68k/daily/mac/
uname -a: Linux debian 2.2.25-mac ..... 68040 GNU/Linux # from memory
Date: 20040828, 15:00 - 20040829, 7:30
Method: Booted kernel and ramdisk from MacOS HD. Did network install
from my own mirror (apt-proxy), which fetches from http.nl.debian.org,
no http proxy configured otherwise. Booted with "ramdisk_size=13000
debug=ser console=tty0" added to my 'normal' Linux/mac68k bootoptions
(mac53c9x=1,0).
Report from previous attempt with d-i beta3 on same machine has bug #238601.
Machine: Macintosh Quadra 650.
Processor: Motorola MC68040 at 33 MHz
Memory: 24 Mb ram.
Root Device: SCSI disk, /dev/sdc3 (30 Mb Swap preprepared on /dev/sdd4)
Root Size/partition table: about 500 Mb.
Output of lspci: not applicable
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [O]
Config network: [O]
Detect CD: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [O]
Create file systems: [O]
Mount partitions: [O]
Install base system: [E]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Reboot: [ ]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Comments/Problems:
Quite early on during the installation I got the message that a low
memory install mode was used, and that I should assign and activate swap
a.s.a.p. I could (off course) only do this after the partitioning step
(I didn't use "DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low" this time as I did in #238601).
The "low memory" box also told me I would not be given a choice of
language and that English would be used. This is fine with me.
The "low memory mode" textbox looked fine. After that a message appeared
the Unicode was set on console and from that moment on a very annoying
bug appeared: Each line-drawing character in every one of the 4 borders
of each text-box was replaced by the 3 character sequence of
an "a" with a caret "^", and 2 black box-like characters. This made
correctly selecting and entering information tricky. Examples:
1) When entering the IP-adress of the gateway "<network+1> is suggested.
My gateway is .2 however, but pressing backspace left the .1 on screen.
So when I subsequently entered 172.16.1.2 I was left with 172.16.1.2.1
on screen. Fucntionality was not affected however and the correct value
(172.16.1.2) was used.
2) Because of this bug I could not clearly see whether other options
where available (from a listbox?) when the guided partitioning suggested
"separate homedirectories" as partitioning scheme, so I had to leaved it
at that. I wanted to select a "one big root filesystem" type scheme,
because the disk is only 500, which is maybe to small for the base
install. I could also not see how I could change the filesystemtype from
ext3 to ext2 at first. I need ext2 because the last stable kernel on
Macintoshes is 2.2.25-mac, and ext3 support has not been compiled into
that AFAIK.
This machine has a tower with 4 SCSI disks, and the partitioning tool
does not allow you to select which disk I'll touch. It also does not
make it very clear that it will only touch disks whose partitioning
scheme and/of filesystem(type)s you change. This made me very anxious
that it would try to rewrite my MacOS partitions. As this does not work
from Linux, it would have left me with a non-bootable system. It only
touched the disks and filesystems I had made changes to however, so this
turned out to work OK.
At 23:30 to 23:40 on 20040828 I went to bed, and observed the
installation progress meter going from "Installing the kernel" at 87% to
"Installing extra packages" at 95%. When I woke up at 20080429, 7:30 it
was still in the same state. Also no disk-activity was visible and
audible, and the system could not switch virtual consoles (I don't know
if it should be able to however). On the serial console, no new
information was visible since the "VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem)."
message, so the kernel had not crashed. However, from another system I
could ping the system being installed. Because no disk activity when
installing (extra) packages was suspicious to me, I assumed the
installation process had hung (maybe because it ran out of diskspace?),
so I reset the system to retry the installation.
HTH, Erik
--
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Erik C.J. Laan elaan at dds.nl
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