Re: Pre-bug-raising questions

[Mike Grice <mgrice@plus.net>]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Bastian Blank <waldi@debian.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 11:52:59AM +0000, Mike Grice wrote:
>> I'm pleased to say that this gets further than ever before:
>>  - it fails to detect the network device but i'm able to select the
>> correct one from a list.
>>  - it fails to detect the disk device but i'm able to select the
>> correct one from a list.
>
> Hmm. Which list do you mean?

Ok.  From a boot net:dhcp, the installer gives me:

Select a language: English
Choose Language: default
Detect Network Hardware:
"No Ethernet card was detected. If you know the name of the driver       │
  │ needed by your Ethernet card, you can select it from the list."

I'm then given a list of all the network drivers available.  I can
scroll down to the 'sunvnet' driver, and the installer then carries on
as normal.

I'm asked for a hostname and domain, which I provide.  I select United
Kingdom as the Debian archive mirror.  I select the default mirror for
that country 'ftp.uk.debian.org'.  I provide HTTP proxy information,
which for my network is http://192.168.107.1:3128 (basic squid
install).

The installer then 'loads additional components', which I think
happens over the network.  It mentions contacting a time server.  I'm
then on the 'detect disks' menu, which tells me:
"  │ No disk drive was detected. If you know the name of the driver
needed   │
  │ by your disk drive, you can select it from the list."

I can scroll down to the 'sunvdc' driver, and the installer then
carries on as normal.

Those are the two menu things I referred to before.

BTW, if I choose guided partitioning, it will select ext2 by default
for the boot partition (I change this, but just thought you would like
to know as its a bit odd, maybe a legacy SILO hangover).

>>                                     The problem I get now is that the
>> kernel the installer installs as part of the setup is the etch-n-half
>> kernel, which doesn't have the required drivers installed.  So I'm
>> stuck at 'waiting for root filesystem...' until I drop to the initrd,
>> and I can't find the module to install.
>
> The daily installers defaults to installing unstable. However there is
> no etch'n'half-kernel in unstable. So you override that decision
> somewhere.

Actually, I just checked this time from a clean install and its picked
the new kernel without prompting.  As I was messing with the network
parameters the first time perhaps it defaulted to the older kernel?
Either way, that part is a non-issue now.  I will provide the install
syslog (thanks for that idea FP) if you need it for diagnosis later...

>> This time, the debian-installer installs a better sounding kernel
>> (2.6.26-1-sparc64-smp), but I'm dumped to the initrd shell again.
>> Looking through the filesystem, the modules are definitely there and I
>> can insmod them and continue the install.
>
> Okay, so its a problem somewhere between udev and the kernel
> definitions.

Ok.  Is this something I can fix myself without rebuilding the
installer?  (e.g., can I preseed it)?

>> Is there anything I'm missing here?  I can tell something is 'just a
>> bit missing' and I'd love to be able to raise a correct bug report for
>> this and get it squashed before Lenny.
>
> Add the modules to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules.

Is that something I need to put in the bug report as a fix for this issue?

Thanks for your help so far,

Mike.