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Package: installation-reports
Boot method: CD
Image version: debian-40r3-i386-netinst.iso
Date: 2008 June 6
Machine: IBM Thinkpad T42
Processor: Pentium M 1.8 GHz
Memory: 1.5 GB
Partitions: installed on an unpartitioned 4 GB USB flash drive
Output of lspci -knn (or lspci -nn): (irrelevant)
Base System Installation Checklist: (all OK except as noted below)
Comments/Problems:
This computer supports booting from USB, so I decided to install debian
on a USB Flash drive. I wanted an encrypted root partition.
PROBLEM 1. I first tried the "automatic" encrypted LVM setup. It
insisted upon making a swap partition, and I was unable to delete that
partition. Of course I don't want a swap partition on a flash based
drive. I ultimately had to back up several steps and do a manual setup.
PROBLEM 2. Before I started the install, I used dd if=/dev/urandom
of=/dev/sda to write random data to the drive, which makes cracking an
encrypted partition/drive much more difficult. However, the debian
installer insisted on writing (zeros?) to the to-be-encrypted partition
before formatting. This was very time consuming, wasteful/redundant,
and perhaps a security liability as well. In fact, the installer did
this several times due to problem 1 ;)
I should be able to skip that writing since I already did it myself.
PROBLEM 3. System would not boot!! .....
It brought up the grub menu just fine, and began loading the kernel and
initramfs. The problem occured when it tried to configure lvm
(/usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/lvm) -- the kernel had
not yet detected the presence of the USB Flash drive! Thus the call to
activate_vg "$ROOT" was doomed to failure, since udev had not yet
discovered the root device. A few seconds after the failure messages,
udev discovered the device -- udev had "settled" before running
local-top, but the USB event came later.
In order to solve this problem, I added a script
to /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-premount that waits for the device
to appear in the /dev tree:
echo -n "Waiting for /dev/sda5 to appear"
while ! [ -b /dev/sda5 ]; do echo -n .; sleep 1s; done
It took me several days to figure out what the problem was, how to fix
it, and how to use initramfs to roll the initrd, but now it works!
Although my script could probably be more robust.
IMO, the debian-installer should always set up the init system to wait
for the $ROOT (and $resume?) partitions to be visible in the /dev tree
before proceeding with the local-top scripts.
~David.
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We are closing this installation report for one of the following
reasons:
- it was reported with a pre-lenny version of Debian
Installer.
- indications in the installation report give the feeling that
the reported problem waslying in another software, unrelated to
D-I, which we can't easily identify.
- indications in the installation report suggest that it may have been
fixed in a more recent version of a D-I component
- it was successful and we forgot closing it..:-)
- it has no information we consider useful
The D-I team is currently in the process of cleaning out the old spool
of installation reports that haven't bene processed yet.
In case you think that the problem you reported has chances to be
still present, please reiterate your installation test with
a more recent image of D-I, if you're in position of doing this.
You'll find daily builds at
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer. We recommend you choose
the netboot image, in the "daily builds section", then choose to
install "squeeze" when prompted.
If some problems are found, please report them with a new bug sent
against installation-reports.
Many thanks for your understanding and your help improving Debian,
past and present.
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