Bug#460471: CDROM Drive not reliable during install
On Sunday 13 January 2008, Jessica Aldis wrote:
> Comments/Problems:
> Boot from CD no problem at all. During install it failed to
> detect the IDE CDROM drive.
There are several possible reasons for problems reading a CD:
- hardware not correctly supported by kernel driver for your IDE controller
- CD not correctly burned
- CD has imperfections that cause read errors (cheap CD-RW?)
- hardware issues with the CD drive
In all cases it is not something we can fix in the installer itself
(especially as you indicate that the tips in the manual don't help).
> Following hints in installation guide
> and so on, I disabled DMA and this helped a bit. Flaky detection
> and mounting of CDROM drive, but errors on reading. Using the
> all-generic-ide boot option gave easy detection/mount of the CDROM
> drive but the same failure to read the CDROM reliably.
The all-generic-ide option is really only useful with SATA disk controllers.
Given your processor speed I somewhat doubt you have one...
> Failure is not immediate. Some small stuff seems to be read correctly
> from the CDROM. From a shell (alt-f2) I can read the files on the
> CDROM comfortably.
However, at that point you are probably not actually reading the files, but
only the directory indexes, which is only a very limited read.
> Checking integrity of the CDROM fails at about 60%, always in the
> same file. I've checked that file's md5sum on another computer
> and it is not corrupted.
The fact that it is always on the same file would still suggest to me that
it could be a hardware issue. Maybe the CD drive in your laptop is less
tolerant of imperfections on the CD than your other computer is.
Have you tried burning a different CD? If not, I suggest you do that.
> The Woody installation CDs I downloaded in 2005 work fine - I can
> re-install Woody whenever I want. Hence I believe the CDROM drive
> is working properly.
There have been loads of changes in the kernel and in IDE drivers in
particular. It may very well be that support for your (older) hardware is
not 100% anymore. If it _is_ a driver problem, you should see the same
issues after installing Etch as the installer does not do anything special
to read the CD.
What I can suggest to try is:
1) burn a different CD-RW (possibly even from a different manufacturer) and
try installing Etch from that
2) download an image for Lenny [1] and try installing that; if it is a
kernel driver issue it could be solved in a newer kernel
3) install Woody or Sarge and upgrade to Etch from that; I'd suggest doing
only a minimal install and to do the upgrade before installing a
desktop environment;
if you install Woody, you should first upgrade to Sarge and then to
Etch; if you install Sarge, use the 2.6 kernel to make the upgrade to
Etch easier
If you do 3), you can then check if you also have the CD problems with the
installed system. If you do, the best thing to do would be to report them
to the upstream kernel developers although they will probably ask you to
first check that the problems also exist for a current kernel (2.6.23) as
2.6.18 is ancient from their point of view.
Cheers,
FJP
[1] http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer
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