Bug#405456: debian-installer: long delay looking for missing floppy drive

[Carlo Segre <segre@debian.org>]

Package: debian-installer
Severity: important


I have tested the most recent installation candidate CDs on a Dell 
Latitude C640 laptop with only a CD/DVD drive.  Just before entering the
partition manager, the installer apparently freezes up twice (first with a
blank screen and next with a screen telling the user that the partitioner is
starting up) for about 5 minutes total before eventually proceeding.

I have looked at the log screen and noticed that the installer is looking
for /dev/fd0 (which is not installed) and prints two error messages before
passing from the blank screen to the one starting up the partitioner and
another two error messages before continuing the installation.

The time delay is sufficient for the user to believe that the system has
frozen and therefore is an important bug, in my opinion.  I have looked in
the manual and the boot screen help pages and there is no obvious parameter
to pass to the system to eliminate this problem.

Thanks,

Carlo

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17-2-686
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)