Bug#220132: install successful, but many oddities
Package: installation-reports
Version: debian-installer beta-1 (Nov 10, 2003)
Severity: normal
Package: installation-reports
INSTALL REPORT
Debian-installer-version: Nov 10, 2003 (beta-1) from
http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/netinst/i386/beta-1/sarge-i386-netinst.iso
uname -a:
Linux localhost 2.4.22-1-386 #9 Sat Oct 4 14:30:39 EST 2003 i686 GNU/Linux
Date: Nov 10, 2003
Method: install from CD, labelled
Debian GNU/Linux testing "Sarge" - Official NetInst Snapshot i386 Binary-1
This CD image also contained the base system, so I could install the base
system without net access.
Machine: IBM-compatible PC, Motherboard Asus A7V
Processor: Athlon Thunderbird 800 MHz
Memory: 512 MB SDRAM (PC133)
Root Device: IDE, hdg7
Root Size/partition table:
The A7V has 4 IDE channels, and on channel#4 I have a 120GB hard disk.
On this disk I had 30GB free (for experiments like this :)
Setup: /dev/hdg7 1GB /
/dev/hdg8 29GB /usr
/dev/hda2 .5GB swap (also used by my Debian woody)
Output of lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133] (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133 AGP]
00:04.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 22)
00:04.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/C/VT8235 PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:04.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 10)
00:04.4 Bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)
00:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
00:09.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
00:0a.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 02)
00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:11.0 Unknown mass storage controller: Promise Technology, Inc. 20265 (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV31 [GeForce FX 5600] (rev a1)
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [O]
Config network: [E]
Detect CD: [E]
Load installer modules: [ ]
Detect hard drives: [E]
Partition hard drives: [O]
Create file systems: [O]
Mount partitions: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Install boot loader: [E]
Reboot: [O]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Comments/Problems:
First problem: I chose German ("Deutsch / Deutschland") as the language
of installation. However, most dialogs were in English. I guess this is
just incomplete (yet).
Config Network:
The installer tried to configure the network via DHCP. This didn't work,
of course, since I don't have net access on this machine (only 56k modem).
Since I just wanted to install the base system from CD, the whole point
of trying to configure the network seemed rather superfluous to me. I was
wishing for an option to just skip this and leave the network unconfigured.
Especially since it takes rather a long time for the DHCP discovery to fail.
After the unsuccessful DHCP thingy I was dumped into the installer menu,
where it wasn't immediately clear to me what I should choose next. So I
just chose the next point listed, which was...
Detect CD:
When I chose this, the installer *again* tried to configure my network
via DHCP! Which failed, of course, and brought me back to the installer
menu. I tried this three times, and the installer never did anything about
my CD drive, but always tried the DHCP stuff. I think this is a real bug.
Being back in the menu, I next chose "Load installer components", although
I didn't know what it should be good for. When it explained to me that I
probably won't need it, I skipped it. Next point...
Detect hardware:
Here I got an error message: "Unable to load some modules". It complained
about ide-mod, ide-probe-mod, and ide-floppy. Well, it turned out that
the install could be completed just fine without these modules, so one can
consider this just a cosmetic bug. Some people might get confused, though.
Besides, it didn't become clear to me what the whole exercise was good
for - I at least expected a summary of what hardware was actually detected.
I now turned to the more familiar points of the installation.
Partition hard drives:
Create file systems:
Mount partitions:
No problems encountered here. Thank God! (and the developpers ;)
Install base system:
This worked almost flawlessly, however, at the very end I got a message
box that was rather screwed up (no title, no message, weird formatting -
sorry for no screenshot) and contained only the "Weiter" ("Next"?) button,
which I clicked. I was returned to the menu.
The weird look of this message box might be related to the incomplete
localization.
At some point, I tried "Save logs to floppy". This was a complete
failure -- there was no floppy activity at all. Neither did I get any
error message.
Install boot loader (LILO):
The installer suggested to install to the boot block of
/dev/ide/host2/bus1/target0/lun0/disc .
Since I can't read devfs newspeak, I just went along with this and
assumed this would be the right choice -- namely /dev/hda, which is
what the BIOS boots. Well, turns out that the above actually is /dev/hdg,
so after the reboot I just got my familiar old boot menu. So I booted
woody and added
other=/dev/hdg
label=sarge
to my lilo.conf, ran lilo, and rebooted. Now I could choose sarge from
the boot menu and actually ended up in sarge, where base-config took over.
I can understand why the installer chose /dev/hdg for LILO installation,
since that's the disk my root partition is on. What really bothers me here
is that I'd have to figure out the whole host-bus-target-lun stuff if I
wanted to manually correct the installer's choice. I'd prefer some kind of
menu that lists the most sensible locations for the boot loader (of course,
one still needs the option for a complete manual configuration -- this just
shouldn't be the *only* option).
After the Install:
On booting, the system again tries its DHCP thing and fails. I think
this process should be backgrounded because it takes very long (I guess
this is not a problem of d-i).
Base-config worked as usual, but I didn't do much with it anyway.
Remaining problems:
CDROM configured wrong: According to /etc/fstab, the cdrom device is
/dev/hdc. However, the module ide-scsi was loaded and had grabbed it,
so the cdrom device was actually /dev/scd0. However, what I did was
to manually rmmod ide-scsi & modprobe ide-cd, so /dev/hdc was the correct
choice again. This point definitely needs fixing.
Wrong keymap: At the very beginning of the installation, the installer
promised that my choice of language would also affect the locale settings
etc., so I had hoped that my choice (German) would at least give me the
right keymap for my standard German QWERTZ keyboard. However, the keymap
I ended up with is rather strange -- most keys are right (even the special
characters), but all the characters I normally access with AltGr (like
|, @, {, }, [, ]) are somewhere else (but it's also different from a US
keymap).
Conclusion:
Install was successful, it didn't shred my hard disks, but I encountered
many oddities.
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