What is the text of the last menu which you get to before the hang? IsOn Fri, 2014-11-21 at 15:40 -0500, Samuel Comeau wrote:
> On November 21, 2014 03:30:13 PM Steve McIntyre wrote:
> > [ Re-adding the CC to the bug report ]
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 10:49:42PM -0500, Samuel Comeau wrote:
> > >Hello Steve,
> > >
> > >The intent of the report was that the installer fails "silently", instead
> > >of crashing with human readable output. I seem to recall seeing an
> > >installer fail with references to incompatible architecture, but that may
> > >be faulty memory.
> > Right, OK. I'm not sure about that myself... :-) That answers my
> > question, too. How about we re-assign this to the kernel package and
> > ask about such a message?
>
> I thought that since there's the installer running, we could put an
> architecture check right there, so when you reach the menu, the installer
> would already be aware what it's running on. So when the amd64 kernel tries to
> start, it would correctly assume it's trying to run on compatible hardware,
> unless the installer prevents it. I'm not sure how that would tie in with the
> other installation methods, however, so it may be best to do as you say and
> let kernel deal with that.
>
> > >I understand from your comment that this behaviour is known, but my
> > >pre-bug- report-search didn't turn up any relevant results about "amd64 +
> > >installer + (hangs OR stalls OR unresponsive) + x86". The results I get
> > >are all about boot time, not installation time, unless I misunderstood
> > >something very fundamental. In my understanding, when I reach the
> > >installer menu, the boot procedure is complete.
> >
> > Correct - at that point you're in Linux with d-i running.
>
> That implies that there is some form of kernel running? Obviously not an amd64
> kernel, if it shows up fine even on x86. Therefore, I assume the arch specific
> kernel gets booted once the user selects an operation to perform.
there anything written on the screen at the point of the hang? If it is
too much text to transcribe then a digital photo of the screen would be
ok too.
Which model of Xeon are you running on? If you don't know then by
pressing cancel/back at the d-i menu you can get to a menu with an
option to drop to a shell and from there run "cat /proc/cpuinfo". I'm
most interested in the "model name" field. If you aren't getting to a
d-i menu at all then there is probably an indication of the processor
model in the BIOS screens somewhere.
If you are booting to a proper Debian installer menu (i.e. past the
initial bootloader menu) then with an amd64 netinst you must be running
something which is at least somewhat amd64 capable and not an i?86 only
thing, there is nothing other than an amd64 kernel on such an image
AFAIK.
Which suggests to me that the hang is happening elsewhere later on,
perhaps when loading the driver modules, but is not related directly to
the processor architecture.
Ian.
