Bug#361180: Debian installer doesn't install kernel
On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 10:20:36PM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
> reassign 361180 base-installer
> retitle Selecting 2.6 kernel when installing using 2.4 will break install
> thanks
>
> On Monday 10 April 2006 21:11, Jack Carroll wrote:
> > That revealed the place where the files get deleted. I'll see if I
> > can move the log to disk and attach it to this message. Just copying a
> > few key items from the screen on the test machine:
> > It happens at the 93% point in the log file. apt-install generates
> > a large number of lines...
>
> OK. This information has been in the syslog all the time. We would not
> have had to activate the debugging for this.
>
> The root of the problem is that you are installing from floppy which uses
> the 2.4 kernel and therefore schedules the package hotplug for
> installation.
>
> When you get to kernel installation, you choose to ignore the offered
> default 2.4 kernel and instead select a 2.6 kernel. The 2.6 kernel
> depends on udev which conflicts with hotplug which results in the kernel
> being uninstalled.
>
> So, if you'd just accept the 2.4 kernel offered by default, the
> installation will go fine. You can upgrade to a 2.6 kernel after the
> installation finishes.
OK, I'll test that now.
>
> If you'd just done a default installation instead of choosing expert mode,
> none of this would have happened. However, Thanks for staying with this
> as it has laid bare something we should not allow users to do.
Well, expert mode is offered because it's needed sometimes. So it
should work.
Similarly, if the installer offers to install the 2.6 kernel, it
should succeed.
And, if a a combination of settings is possible, somebody will try
it. It should either work or display a useful error message.
So, we do beta tests to find out whether something unexpected
happens. Mission accomplished.
Several solutions are possible. If you want to force 2.6 to be
installed only as an upgrade after installation is finished, one possibility
would be to display a message when the user selects a kernel, with advice to
upgrade the kernel after re-boot.
However, this could lead to some other problems. The way network
boards are configured differs between 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. 2.4 uses
/etc/modules.conf, while 2.6 uses /etc/modules to load driver modules for
boards that can't be autodetected, such as most ISA boards. The syntax and
the configuration tools are different. If I remember right, some driver
modules have different parameter syntax for 2.4 and 2.6. So unless there
are some pretty sophisticated scripts for converting module and network
configuration, a network interface that netcfg generates during installation
with a 2.4 kernel might break when the kernel is upgraded to 2.6.
I don't see any particular reason why an installer shouldn't run
under a 2.4 kernel, but is there a reason why floppy installers and CD
installers use different kernels? (I think I remember working with an
installer that offered a choice of install-time kernels, but I don't
remember what distro that was. Might have been Libranet 3.0.)
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