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Bug#220163: installation-reports: netboot install attempt via PXE (fwd)



Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
> Am Die, den 11.11.2003 schrieb Joe Nahmias um 09:16:
> 
> > Alright, here are the highlights of how this install went:
> > 
> > 0) OK, after much struggling (and dealing with my nemesis error message
> > 'VFS: Cannot open root device "" or 3a:04') I managed to get the d-i
> > netboot image to work via PXE.  For posterity (and the installation
> > guide) the magic kernel options I needed to make this work are
> > "ramdisk_size=8192 root=/dev/ram0".  If anyone would like assistance
> > setting up a PXE testbed or copies of various configs I use please don't
> > hesitate to ask.
> It would be nice, if you could write a short addition to the
> INSTALLATION-HOWTO about your way to install d-i via PXE boot. There is
> already a very short section on netbooting the installer. If you send a
> patch to debian-boot, I will look at it and commit it to CVS.

This was already requested (hi tbm!) and sent to the BTS and the
debian-testing list (where the request originated).  I titled the
message "How to create a PXE d-i netboot testbed in 10 easy steps"
(MSG-ID: <[🔎] 20031111072240.239DA1C938@laptop.nahmias.net>).  Please look
at it in one of these places.

> > 1) Install boots into the main menu.  Interface looks alot snazzier than
> > the old text interface, however the line-drawing characters are all
> > messed up on my terminal (corners are displayed as '>', &c.)  Known bug?
> not know bug, please file one. Sorry I don't know which package to blame
> for that. 

Any takers on where I should file the bug?  slang?

> btw the installation should not boot into main-menu but directly go into
> languagechooser.

That probably happened b/c of the next problem :)

> > 2) Picking "Choose language" doesn't get very far.  This is what I can
> > piece together from syslog:
> > 
> > DEBUG: Menu item 'languagechooser' selected
> > DEBUG: configure languagechooser, status: 4
> > WARNING **: Configuring 'languagechooser' failed with error code 1
> > WARNING **: Menu item 'languagechooser' failed.
> > 
> > Any ideas?  Known unfiled bug?  File a new bug against languagechooser?
> > 
> bug not know. You should have languagechooser 1.03 on your image, which
> is the same as on the beta1 which works for most people. Please file a
> bug.

Yes, the image contains version 1.03.  I will file a bug.

> > 3) After doing 'Select a Keyboard Layout', I chose 'Detect network
> > hardware'.  This generated the following two (fatal looking) errors:
> > 
> >   a. An error occured while running 'modprobe -v floppy false`.
> >   b. An error occured while running 'modprobe -v ide-cd false`.
> > 
> > Since this is a netboot install, these errors should not be fatal.
> please file a bug on hw-detect (or ethdetect?). It's strange that these
> are tried for network hardware detection. Probably the installer tries
> to load additional modules from a floppy?

I really don't know why it's happening.  I will file a bug on hw-detect.

> > 4) When finally presented with a list of ethernet drivers to pick from,
> > the requisite driver for this laptop -- b44 -- is missing.  I tried
> > switching to vc2 and doing 'modprobe -v b44', but this fails since the
> > module doesn't exist on the image.  How do we get it added?
> known bug. As of linux-kernel-di 0.12 this driver is in
> nic-extra-modules. This means you have to load it from an additional
> floppy. If this is a common NIC then we could add it to nic-modules,
> which is on the netboot initrd.

I believe it is a common NIC and it is used on all of the newer Dell
Laptops.

For the netboot images, why don't we include nic-extra-modules??
Wouldn't this make sense to do since we know that a network install is
being attempted?  It's not like we're trying to cram stuff onto a floppy
here, so why not put all the network modules we have into this image?

> > PS - This particular laptop doesn't have a serial port, so all
> > output/error messages are hand-typed and subject to typos, &c.
> You could try to save /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog to an
> already formatted partition. 

Unfortunately, I don't have a partition available that I can write to
from linux, and fdisk isn't available yet to create one.


Thanks for the help!
Joe



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