Avoiding installation trouble (suggested fix)
Hello folks,
I hope I am in the right forum for this. This probably concerns
debian-installer.
I've been running several Debian sarge machines originating back from when
sarge was in testing stage. Recently I had occasion to install Debian on
another machine. I just popped in a netinstall CD and started off like I
had many times before.
Soon I ran into trouble. After starting aptitude for the first times, I
got into dependency loops that required removal of "essential" packages (I
had to type in long sentences to force the installer to do what I wasn't
supposed to do). The whole installation process was quite odd and bumpy
and very unlike my previous experiences installing Debian. After a few
more reboots I suddenly ended up with a kernel-less system whose root
partition I couldn't even mount from a rescue CD because I couldn't guess
the right kernel parameters for the SATA interface.
In the end I found out what was wrong: I had used an old install CD back
from sarge==testing days. My /etc/apt/sources list therefore pointed at
"testing" resources which, without a proper "dist-upgrade" (which at no
point I had wanted because I wanted a sarge system), couldn't have worked.
After downloading burning a contemporary install CD everything of course
went as smoothly as one has come to expect from a Debian system
To come to the end: I think a "sarge" install CD should always stay a
"sarge" install CD no matter how old. Anybody wanting to install
bleeding-edge systems can be expected to be able to download bleeding-edge
install CDs as well, whereas the conservative lazy-ass won't appreciate
falling into traps like I did. I'd suggest that there be some kind of
check for gross age or version discrepancies between the install CD and
the system about to be installed.
Thanks a lot,
--Daniel
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