I've done more testing with drive #2 - the "CDROM mounted in a cheapo external USB enclosure" mentioned in the original report. I may have mis-reported the problem as the error I see now is "Your installation CD-ROM couldn't be mounted". To summarize the current state with drive #2: Lenny install (install5.tgz): - cdrom-detect takes around 12 minutes and results in "Your installation CD-ROM couldn't be mounted" error. Opening and closing the tray and retrying cdrom-detect is successful. - CD access is very slow with many errors logged, during the entire process. Etch install (install6.tgz): - cdrom-detect takes only a couple seconds with no error. - CDROM access is normal speed with no errors logged. Note that grub-install also failed the first time with the "Error 6: Mismatched or corrupt version of stage1/stage2" on both of these etch and lenny installs. I specified "/dev/hda4" for one and "(hd0,3)" for the other so the way the drive is specified apparently isn't the issue. A lenny system will sometimes have the same errors when connecting drive #2 with media already inserted (same as drive #1 - the firewire-connected one). This hasn't been tested with etch.
Attachment:
install5.tgz
Description: application/tgz
Attachment:
install6.tgz
Description: application/tgz