Re: Installation failed - and failed again...
On Sat 02 Mar 2013 at 19:56:43 -0500, Mark Filipak wrote:
> On 2013/3/2 3:36 PM, Brian wrote:
> >
> >Your success was not a result of running the text-based Debian
> >Installer. Forget about it. Try a bit of lateral, or even vertical,
> >thinking. You may not realise it but substituting the USB stick you
> >initially used for a USB hard disc is the crux of the matter.
>
> Observation: I'm struck by how some (many?) on this list tell me what
> I did (like I was asleep) and they're wrong. Please, pay attention...
>
> I did not make a substitution.
Ok. You are using USB flash/USB flash drive/USB hard disc/USB drive
interchangeably to refer to the same device? Its good to have that
clarified.
> 1 - I installed Debian Live on a USB flash drive.
> 2 - I booted to the USB flash drive.
This is the 1GB drive. Correct?
> 3 - I invoked the GUI version of the Debian Installer and attempted to
> install Debian to a USB hard disk. - Both GRUB and LILO installation
> failed (GRUB is automatically tried, and fails, LILO is tried
> manually).
The install medium was the 8GB drive. Correct?
> 4 - I invoked the text-based version of the Debian Installer targeted
> to the same USB hard disk and it succeeded.
>
> Of course, between steps 3 & 4 I had to reboot back to Windows and
> delete the USB hard disk partitions because deleting them inside the
> GUI Debian Installer didn't work, so I guess it actually has more
> bugs, eh?
No, no more bugs; you have had your fair share up to now. Don't be
greedy; leave some for other people. You've used the very fuzzy term
"didn't work", but whatever you did triggered the same bug you had
already met.
> The point is: in both cases (unsuccessful & successful) the
> source of the install was Debian Live on a USB flash drive and the
> target of the install was a USB hard disk.
No, the two cases are definitely not identical.
Case1 (Unsuccessful)
--------------------
The 8GB drive had previously had Debian Live installed to it. (This is
clearly described in your first post). The target drive would contain
information about an iso9660 filesystem. GRUB is designed not to
install to a drive when it detects an iso9660 filesystem is present on
it. [1]
Case1 (Successful)
------------------
The 8GB drive had been processed by a Windows partitioning program.
This wipes the information about the iso9660 file system. GRUB will
now install.
> >Now that you mention it - what does GRUB report in the syslog when it
> >fails to install as you described in your very first post? Be daring;
> >give it a go again, exactly as you related there.
>
> Sigh! How can I read the syslog? Where is it? /var/...blah-blah-blah... or
> /usr/...blah-blah-blah... or /sys/...blah-blah-blah... - I'm not a Linux
> user. And, since nothing gets written to the USB flash drive (remember: this
> Debian Live thinks it's running on CD), how would I find it at all!
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2013/03/msg00187.html
> >You succeeded (which is good) because you changed the install environment.
> >This neither proves nor disproves anything.
>
> I did not change the install environment. What makes you think I did?
You have told us as much above. The state of the 8GB drive for the text
mode install is different from its initial state.
Incidentally, it is never a good idea to change more than one variable
at a time in an experiment. It can (as it has in your case) lead to
an invalid or erroneous conclusion.
[1] For those whose wish to test this assertion:
a) Plug a USB stick in and identify its device name with
dmesg | tail -n 20
b) Write an isohybrid ISO (an amd64 or i386 netinst would do) to the
stick with
cat ISO > /dev/sdX
c) Install GRUB with
grub-install /dev/sdc
d) Re-partition the stick with fdisk and repeat c).
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