Holger Wansing wrote:
> today I tried to perform a test installation on an old
> Toshiba laptop Satellite 320CDS (low memory install, netinst cd,
> daily build from 17. Sept. 2007).
> The system is lacking any network hardware
Using a netinst CD on a machine without a network is not very much
recommended since it leaves you with a base system and no way to add
whatever software you need, except for using a second CD.
apt-setup has recently become more intelligent about making sure users
set up a mirror with a netinst CD. In my testing, I am not able to get
through apt-setup using a netinst CD w/o choosing a mirror. When it
fails to connect to the mirror due to there being no network, it just
loops back and asks again what mirror to use. This isn't the behavior
you describe, although it seems suboptimal.
It looks like patches were applied to try to fix this as described in
#402645, but they do not take into account what happens if the system
actually has no network card. In that case, netcfg/dhcp_options is never
seen, and does not have the value tested for ("Do not configure the
network at this time") but instead some other, default value.
I've fixed this bug, but I am not 100% sure it's the one you reported,
since it doesn't match your reported behavior. Anyway, the fixed version
works in my testing. Please let us know if it doesn't work in tomorrow's
builds.
> so I have to skip
> the steps "Detect network hardware" and "Configure network",
> and also the next step in the list, "Configure the clock"
You don't need to; all these steps handle the case of there being no network
cleanly. Clock setup will let you choose your timezone, even if it can't
use ntp to synch the clock. Network configuration will still let you pick
a hostname for the machine, which is useful even if it's not networked.
(main-menu allows skipping over a previously failed option, and will not
keep returning to it, but this doesn't help if a user wants to skip over
a whole block of options. See #288053.)
--
see shy jo
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