Package: installation-reports
INSTALL REPORT
Debian-installer-version: etch i386 netinst daily 2006.12.12
md5sum 135db969cce6d94c64adb9f42764581a
uname -a: Linux testhost 2.6.18-3-686 #1 SMP Mon Dec 4 16:41:14 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux
Date: 2006.12.13
Method:
How did you install? netinst cdrom, with 'installgui'
What did you boot off? netinst cdrom
If network install, from where?
Proxied? used an apt-proxy on the LAN to access packages.
Machine: Dell Optiplex 745 tower-format desktop
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz
Memory: 1Gb
Root Device: /dev/sda1
Root Size/partition table:
# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 62 497983+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 63 427 2931862+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 428 9726 74694217+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 428 1035 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 1036 1400 2931831 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 1401 1522 979933+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 1523 9726 65898598+ 83 Linux
Output of lspci and lspci -n:
see attachment (hardware-summary.gz)
Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
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: [o]
Install boot loader: [o]
Reboot: [e] see "Final Reboot" below
Comments/Problems:
This was a straightforward install: delete two existing windows
partitions, install only debian. Only one disk in the system.
USB keyboard and mouse, no PS/2 ports on the system.
I was impressed by the gui installer, it's quite slick now.
The only fault I could find was that in some places it changes the cursor
in somewhat unexpected ways - specifically, it seems to leave the cursor as
the I-beam shape for too long in Country selection and in the partitioning
final confirmation screen. I feel it should be changing back to an arrow when
you are going to press the "Continue" button.
There are probably other screens that have this behaviour but I did not note
them.
I was briefly confused by the screen offering choices of kernel. I can't
recall if there was some explanation about linux-image-2.6-686,
ie "pick this if you want to get security patches to your kernel".
Perhaps this is/could be covered in the installation guide.
In tasksel, I turned off everything, including "Desktop" and "Standard System".
I don't know if this has any effect on my rebooting woes (see below).
Later, I installed the desktop task. I was _highly_ impressed that the
X system was autoconfigured so well (vesa driver, but correctly detected
and set the resolution of the LCD monitor). The default GNOME deskstop also
looks a lot better than in sarge and feels faster somehow. Great job!
Final reboot
------------
The system failed to reboot cleanly at the end of the installation.
After getting to the last screen and exiting the install gui ok,
the screen cleared and I saw a few lines of text, ending with:
Synchronizing SCSI cache for disk sda:
Restarting system.
.
And then nothing. The keyboard was wedged, num lock light was off
(it's usually lit during normal operation).
I had the cdrom drawer still open, so I closed it and waited.
Still nothing, no disk activity or response to keystrokes.
Perhaps this is an acpi related problem? I guess the next step should have
been to power off the system. The bios rev is 2.0.5 (2006-10-25).
I powered off the system manually with the button on the front.
When I powered up I encountered more problems.
Grub was ok, it showed the correct things and booted the kernel.
ehci-hcd and uhci-hcd were loaded, as was usbhid, which detected the
mouse and keyboard, and the keyboard was working fine (<shift>-PgUp
was working).
There were some timeouts with the kernel waiting on the unused SATA
ports ata3 and ata4. These might be alarmingly long to a new user but
they gave me the time to scroll back up and check on the usb config.
Then the kernel attached disk sda, and the output showed that it had
detected the partition table. At this point, after the messages
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 < sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8 >
sd 0:0:0:0 Attached scsi disk sca
the system appeared to lock up.
The keyboard was inoperable, I tried a few key presses and then waited.
Num lock light was unlit.
After about 1 minute or more the system continued to boot.
When I was presented with a login prompt, I could not type anything.
I tried hotplugging the keyboard and mouse into other USB ports on the
back and the front of the box. No change. I saw no messages on the
console about usb devices being registered.
So I hit the power again, and when I powered up this time, I did not
experience the delay noted above and the keyboard worked normally.
It's unclear from the logs what was going on. I suspect udev, I think
I saw something flash past about udev-bottom or so, on the successful
boot.
After rebooting I checked the logs; in /var/log/syslog the line after
sd 0:0:0:0 Attached scsi disk sca
is
kernel: Attempting manual resume
kernel: kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
if that's any help.
I went into tasksel on the command line to install a bit more of the
system, (tasksel --new, turned on "standard" and "desktop") and when
that completed I rebooted from the command line.
This time the system rebooted cleanly.
I was also able to 'halt' the system and have it power off correctly.
Other comments
--------------
I wanted to avoid creating a local user other than root (networked
environments often have their home directory space on a file server,
and mount it with NFS etc).
To achieve this I had to back up through two screens to get to the
main menu of the installer. I could not see any other way to skip this.
Perhaps it is worth allowing the user to skip adding an unpriveledged
local user, by accepting blank input for the new user fields?
Or a specific "skip this step" button?
I think 'root' still should be created as normal though.
ifplugd can be erratic. This may be a hardware issue, but it has
consequences. In /etc/network/interfaces I have
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
but after I finally got the system rebooted I had no network up.
I was able to run
ifup eth0
and things worked normally but I think for anything except laptops it
might be simpler to make the interface 'auto' and point to the documentation
of interfaces(5).
Before I noticed this, I was attempting to run tasksel and getting
nowhere. (There was no indication of a problem from tasksel, but that's
a distraction here)
I chose to enter a mirror manually (my local apt-proxy host) instead of
using one of the officual mirrors. I had two attempts at this, because I
typed in http://<proxyname>:9999 instead of the correct <proxyname>:9999.
I backed out to the main menu and tried to set the package sources again
and this time gave the correct input.
Perhaps this is a bug?
I think it would be best to either parse the input of that field and only
accept the part matching hostname:portnum or use the type:// that was input.
For example the user may want a ftp:// source instead of an http:// one.
The installer appears to have left the /cdrom/ source in sources.list
in this case (ie does not comment it out). Is that normal/expected?
For some reason there were two cdrom lines in sources.list. Perhaps
that's it - a second line got written in there on the second attempt
noted above, and was not commented out later?
The installer has made tremendous strides forward!
Install logs and other status info is available in /var/log/debian-installer/.
Once you have filled out this report, mail it to submit@bugs.debian.org.
Attachment:
hardware-summary.gz
Description: Binary data