Bug#335093: debian-installer: misses ISO that resides on USB memory stick on fast hardware
Package: debian-installer
Severity: normal
Tags: patch
I followed the instructions that are in the Debian Installer Manual about preparing files for booting from USB.
After booting my new PowerEdge 850 (dual Opteron 3GHz HT), the debian-installer boots, but is unable to find the ISO that resides on the USB stick. After retrying the search, the installer finds /dev/discs/disc1/part1 (the SATA disk is disc0) and identifies the ISO.
I have tracked this to the iso-scan package and the iso-scan.postinst file in that package.
It seems iso-scan runs hw-detect and then continues to run block_devices. The time it needs to complete both is too short to allow the USB host to register the USB devices attached. The problem is fixed with the following patch:
------------- begin patch ---------------
--- iso-scan.postinst.orig 2005-10-21 20:19:55.000000000 +0000
+++ iso-scan.postinst 2005-10-21 20:43:25.122242688 +0000
@@ -88,6 +88,9 @@
# Hopefully this will find the drive.
hw-detect iso-scan/detect_progress_title || true
+# Allow the USB host to register devices
+sleep 5;
+
# Find all block devices, and get a count of them, for use in progress bar.
DEVS=$(block_devices)
DEV_COUNT=0
-------------- end patch ----------------
This delay would allow the USB host to complete a scan of the bus and register attached devices. A delay of five seconds should be acceptable on other hardware. (Installing on older hardware takes a lot of time anyway ;)
Perhaps the delay could be a bit shorter, but I haven't played around with this yet. 5 seconds is confirmed to work though.
Please apply the patch. It would help a lot of people on newer hardware.
Regards,
Allard Hoeve
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (600, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.10-ac10-byte
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Reply to: