Bug#2341: Install problems
Package: Initial Installation.
Version: 0.93-6
I just finished reloading a spare system (twice) with Debian and I want to
relay a few problems that I noticed.
--> I intended to load up the current Debian 1.1 candidate, but what I
got from unstable/disks-i386/* was the 0.93 installation set.
--> I had lots of problems loading in the base floppies. In the middle
of the loading process, my system would hang. I have not had
problems with this hardware before, so I am going to blame it on
the floppy_merge program. Since floppy_merge ignores interrupts
and only one virtual console is available, each time the program
got stuck, I needed to reboot the system, cycling through multiple
floppies each time. When I restarted the load, more files would
be successfully loaded with each successive attempt (at least
three attempts per installation) until I managed to load in all
of the files. When I ran:
floppy_merge /dev/fd0 | gunzip | cpio --extract -v
manually, it seemed to be more successful than when I restarted
the load from the installation menu.
--> On both installation attempts, when I rebooted with the custom boot
disk, fsck found a corrupted file system (the one & only on that
machine) and automatically corrected it. Are we unmounting the
file system(s) when we reboot? Are we running sync?
--> The binfmt_elf module did not load when I rebooted from the custom
boot floppy. Further, it does not even exist on the newly loaded
system, so I can not go ahead with switching the system over to
the 1.1 suite of packages. (Perhaps this file was not completely
written to my newly created hard disk when I rebooted?) I could
build a boot floppy with elf enabled on my main system, but not
everyone has that option.
Requests:
An attempt at an elf-only installation set.
A network installation option. If it can not be fit into the
existing set of disks, I would like to see a separate set which
provides this functionality. (Also, there are removable-media
SCSI drives. Perhaps we should allow for people to install from
them instead of from a floppy or CD-ROM.)
A second virtual console.
Floppy_merge should not ignore interrupts. If the interrupt
that it does not mask is not ^C, then the user should be
informed as to haw to break out of it.
Fix whatever is causing fsck to complain when the system is
booted for the first time.
--
David H. Silber dhs@firefly.com Project: Debian GNU/Linux (dbackup)
<http://www.access.digex.net/~dhs/> Wanted: Spare time.
Programmer for hire.
Reply to: