Re: Boot Disks

[Bob Hilliard <hilliard@flinet.com>]

Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca> writes:
> On Tue, 28 Apr 1998, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> 
> > The sensitivity to good disks is, as I understand it, caused by poor
> > BIOS floppy drivers and is independent of the Linux kernel, let alone
> > which distribution you are running.
> 
> Actually, as I understood it, the problem was poor linux floppy
> drivers. You'll note that when most errors occure is when reading the base
> image or rescue disks, I have very rarely had the boot disk fail.

     Between my initial rex installation, and bo and hamm testing, I
have installed (or attempted to install) debian from floppies close to
100 times.  I have rarely seen a base image disk fail, but have seen
quite a few boot disks fail, and many rescue disks fail.

     I am convinced that the failures are truly random, and are not,
in most cases, caused by the disks themselves.  In one experiment,
during the bo testing, I made one set of disks using brand new 3M
disks, and another set from recycled AOL disks.  

     I attempted the installation at least 20 times with each set, and
recorded the results, including the number of dots displayed when it
failed.  I consider the number of dots to be a reasonable measure of
the point within the image where failure occurred.  Unfortunately, I
lost my record of these tests when I trashed a partition last year, and
Dale's recent hardware catastrophe undoubtedly destroyed his copy of
my test report giving the figures.

     There were slightly more failures with the virgin disks than with
the recycled ones, and the number of dots at failure was completely
random.  In one instance, I observed half a dozen consecutive
failures, followed half a dozen successful installations with the same
floppies.  My experience leads me to believe that the failures are
random, and primarily occur when disks are being read by the bios.

     I have long maintained that we place too much emphasis on making
new disks with new floppies, re-downloading the files, etc., and not
enough emphasis on simply repeating the installation many times.

     I have no cure to offer for the problem, just what may be a better
insight into where to look for a cure.

Bob
-- 
   _
  |_)  _  |_       Robert D. Hilliard    <hilliard@flinet.com>
  |_) (_) |_)      Palm City, FL  USA    PGP Key ID: A8E40EB9


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