Re: Install Report: Failure - Dell PowerApp Web 100 - Failed to detect scsi controller

[Erik Dykema <ed2019@columbia.edu>]

Hi-
	OK, I think i get it, thanks!  I was attempting to install the 
'testing' distribution, that must be why it didn't work.
	So the 'fix' for this is to get the 2.4.24 kernel into testing.
	OR, to build a 'testing' version of d-i.

	As a side note, I have a question regarding why the netboot images need 
not contain all the necessary drivers?  At their current size (2.1 megs) 
they are too small to fit onto a floppy disk, so they are mostly used by 
(perhaps here is where I am wrong?) those doing PXE boots (like me)?
	On the sizes that we are working with ( 1 - 10 megabytes ) I don't 
think it would necessarily hurt to include more drivers / modules in the 
netboot image.
	Is my thinking missing something / wrong, or is this something that 
just hasn't been discussed yet?

thanks again for your help!!!!
erik


Joey Hess wrote:
> Erik Dykema wrote:
>
> > Everything seems to boot up fine, but the kernel fails to detect the 
> > adaptec scsi controller, so the installer gets to the 'Partition Hard 
> > Drives' part without any warning and then won't go any further.  There 
> > is no error message suggesting that hard drives were not detected.
>
>
> We currently have the following situation with netboot installs of
> unstable debian-installer:
>
>  - The netboot image needs to download the scsi and ide drivers from the
>    debian archive; they are not included in the image.
>  - By default, d-i uses the versions of the udebs in testing.
>  - In unstable, d-i has switched to the 2.4.24 kernel. The version of
>    d-i in testing uses the 2.4.22 kernel.
>
> Therefore, if you want to do a netboot install using the unstable
> version of d-i, you need to make sure that you tell it to install
> unstable. This will include looking in unstable for the scsi, ide, and
> other kernel modules, where it will find the 2.4.24 ones. It will also
> include installing debian unstable to your hard drive, unless you go
> back to the mirror configuration step after d-i downloads the rest of
> itself, and switch it back to using testing.