Bug#405250: marked as done (SPARC32 floppy install - issues switching between floppies)

Package: installation-reports

Boot method: <How did you boot the installer? CD? floppy? network?> floppy
Image version: <Full URL to image you downloaded is best> http://people.debian.org/~stappers/d-i/images/daily/sparc32/floppy/2.6/boot.img
Date: <Date and time of the install>  20061219

Machine: <Description of machine (eg, IBM Thinkpad R32)> Sun SparcStation 5
Processor: 70Mhz
Memory: 80MB
Partitions: <df -Tl will do; the raw partition table is preferred>

Output of lspci -nn and lspci -vnn: none

Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Initial boot:           [E]
Detect network card:    [ ]
Configure network:      [ ]
Detect CD:              [ ]
Load installer modules: [ ]
Detect hard drives:     [ ]
Partition hard drives:  [ ]
Install base system:    [
 ]
Clock/timezone setup:   [ ]
User/password setup:    [ ]
Install tasks:          [ ]
Install boot loader:    [ ]
Overall install:        [ ]

Comments/Problems:
There are some oddities when performing a floppy install of the "testing" version of Debian:

After
booting the system from floppy, it will not automatically eject the
boot floppy when prompting for the root floppy.  The install process
does later automatically eject the root floppy at the point where it
asks if you have a floppy disk containing drivers needed for the
install.

When you manually switch the boot floppy for the root
floppy, it takes exactly four keypresses of the ENTER key before the
system takes any action with the root floppy.  After hitting the ENTER
key on the QWERTY part of a Sun5c keyboard four times, the system
behaves normally, and you see a message that the system has found the
root image.  This is on a
 SparcStation 20 w/CG6 framebuffer and Sun5c
keyboard/mouse, as well as a SparcStation 5 (170Mhz) and SparcStation 5
(70Mhz) using the same keyboard and mouse between all three systems.

I've
also seen the same behaviour switching floppys during an install where
I was using a serial console instead of a real monitor/keyboard/mouse. 
It took four ENTERs to get from the boot to the root floppy on an x86
Linux workstation running Minicom in VT102 emulation and ANSI emulation.

At
this point in time, these are the only issues I've seen performing a
successful floppy based install of the SPARC32 version of Debian
"testing" on a Sun SparcStation 20, a Sun SparcStation 5 (170Mhz
processor), and a Sun SparcStation 5 (70Mhz processor).

--Dan
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
--- End Message ---