And yet further efforts. I rebooted using an Ubuntu CD, and checked what
modules were installed. It would appear that what is needed at least for
the PATA system on the 955 board (D955XBKLKR) is pata_marvell.
Unfortunately, this doesn't see the light of day until 2.6.25 kernels,
which is a shame given that it's needed for boards several years old now.
With this, and some other modules from 2.6.25 which I've been unable to
identify, I can see both PATA IDE discs and the CDROM on the same IDE
channel (although /dev/cdrom now points to /dev/scd0). I think this is
about as far as I want to go with this investigation, so unless someone is
prepared to produce a CDROM boot image (or a floppy boot image) that
contains the required modules, I shall be forced to use Ubuntu instead.
To summarise, the problems are:-
Lenny beta2 boot CDROM does not contain suitable CDROM drivers for this
board
Lenny beta2 boot CDROM does not contain suitable ethernet drivers for this
board
Lenny beta2 boot CDROM does not contain suitable ethernet drivers for an
SMC network card
Lenny beta2 boot CDROM does not contain suitable floppy drivers for this
board
because of this, it is impossible to save (and hence to forward) the
installation failure debug logs
The same problems apply to the latest testing CDROM install
The floppy install does contain the missing ethernet drivers, both for the
board and the SMC card
The floppy install does contain the missing floppy drivers
The floppy install does not contain the missing CDROM drivers
There is therefore the possibility of adding the missing CDROM drivers to
the driver set for the floppy install
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Thackray" <jgt@pobox.com>
To: "Jérémy Bobbio" <lunar@debian.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:14 PM
Subject: Re: Bug#492051: Lenny Beta 2 installer failure
>Further efforts.
>
>I have now verified that the floppy drive is not faulty. The machine can
>boot from it. I have since acquired the Debian floppy installation system
>from http://linux.simple.be/debian/floppy and have been able to use it to
>detect all the network cards in the system (one SMC card which the
>testing
>latest and the lenny2 beta could not detect, and the on board Intel
>chip).
>The cd-drivers from this site were still insufficient to detect the CDROM
>drive however.
>
>So, one thing you will now be able to check is what network drivers are
>available from the floppy installer that are missing from the testing
>latest and lenny2 beta.
>
>One a system has been installed, I'll let you know what CDROM driver it
>has chosen, assuming it does choose one.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jon Thackray" <jgt@pobox.com>
>To: "Jérémy Bobbio" <lunar@debian.org>
>Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 12:55 PM
>Subject: Re: Bug#492051: Lenny Beta 2 installer failure
>
>
>>I have now also tried a formatted floppy with no fie system (using using
>>fdformat) and a formatted floppy with an ext2 file system. All fail. I
>>can't save the data to /mnt, but have no way to get it out of the
>>machine
>>from there. I've tried mounting other devices within the machine which I
>>know to contain valid linux partitions, but mount always replies
>>"mounting /dev/scd1 on /mnt failed: no such device" from a command such
>>as mount -t ext3 /dev/scd1 /mnt
>>
>>Since there seem to be around 100k bytes of logs it's not feasible
>>simply
>>to transcribe them by hand. Is there any other way I can get them out of
>>the machine?
>>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Jon Thackray" <jgt@pobox.com>
>>To: "Jérémy Bobbio" <lunar@debian.org>
>>Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 9:30 AM
>>Subject: Re: Bug#492051: Lenny Beta 2 installer failure
>>
>>
>>>Hmm, I formatted a floppy (FAT) and tried to save the debug logs to it.
>>>That also failed. So, is there some other format you want the floppy to
>>>be, or is there some other way I can get at the logs. There are no
>>>mounte file systems (haven't got that far yet), and the installer won't
>>>drive the ethernet so web save isn't an option. Where do I go from
>>>here?
>>>
>>>----- Original Message -----
>>>From: "Jérémy Bobbio" <lunar@debian.org>
>>>To: "Jon Thackray" <jgt@pobox.com>; <492051@bugs.debian.org>
>>>Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 5:51 PM
>>>Subject: Re: Bug#492051: Lenny Beta 2 installer failure
>>>
>>>
>>
>