XPost: linux.debian.maint.boot
From: [email protected]

Package: installation-reports
version: rc1
severity: normal

Debian-installer-version: Sarge RC1
downloaded from
http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/sarge_d-i/i386/rc1/sarge-i386-netinst.iso
uname -a: Linux (none) 2.4.26-1-386 #2 Sat May 1 16:31:24 EST 2004 i686
unknown
Date: 2004-08-14T12:00:00 GMT+10
Method: booted off internal cdrom, with netinst iso

Machine: Dell Latitude CPiA
Processor: Intel pII 364MHz
Memory: 128Mb

Root Device:
Root Size/partition table:
Output of lspci:

Base System Installation Checklist:

Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [ ]
Config network: [ ]
Detect CD: [E]
Load installer modules: [ ]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [ ]
Create file systems: [ ]
Mount partitions: [ ]
Install base system: [ ]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Reboot: [ ]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Comments/Problems:
Tried two different boot commands.
1. "linux"

The installation fails at the question -
"load installer components from CD"
claiming it cannot find anything to load.
Getting into a shell (<ctrl><alt><F2>),
"df" shows /cdrom is mounted (/dev/cdroms/cdrom0)
ls -l /cdrom/dists shows a directory named "sarge"
four ordinary files - "frozen","stable","testing","unstable"


2. "expert"
before the "detect & mount cdrom" step I started a shell
(<ctrl><alt><F2>)
and gave these commands
modprobe ide-core options="ide=nodma"
modprobe piix
modprobe ide-detect
Back in the main installer screen. I selected the
detect & mount cddrom
option. This took me to a long list of modules that autodetection
suggested were necessary.
I turned off all but these: ide-disk, ide-cd, isofs
when prompted to enter parameters for these modules,
I said "Y" but did not enter any parameters.
The modules loaded with no errors.

Next I was prompted to "Start PC card services?"
I said "N"
The installer warned that some modules were not available or installed
(can't recall which). The list was
agpgart, ide-mod, ide-probe-mod, ide-generic, ide-floppy
Next I get a report that it has detected a good cdrom:
Debian GNU/Linux testing "Sarge" - Official NetInst Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20040806)
When prompted to "Load installer components from cd?"
I said "Y"
Now it shows the list of installer components to load. This is the
step that failed before.

As a further check,
ls -l /cdrom/dists shows several symlinks, all pointing to the "sarge"
directory.


Analysis:
---------
This is the same bug as 247704 and 250323. But see below for a new one.

The nondetection is happening because DMA is turned on for cdrom devices
and the cdrom in this laptop doesn't play nicely with that.

The nicest way to resolve this problem would be to set
CONFIG_IDEDMA_ONLYDISK=y

Failing that, there is another path, explaining how to turn off dma
for the cdrom. Is it possible to do this from the linux boot line?
That would be much simpler than having to muck about in expert
mode and modprobing things in the right order (it took me a while to
figure out I needed to modprobe _before_ doing the cdrom detect step).

If this is possible, perhaps the text for that (and a pointer to the
complete list of boot options) could go in the Errata pages.

New bug:
The cdrom-detect script does not adequately check that it has found
the Release file.
Please could someone clone this bug to the appropriate package,
and add a "patch" tag?

The problem is this:
/var/lib/dpkg/info/cdrom-detect.postinst sets "suite" using this code:

for distlink in stable testing unstable ; do
relfile=/cdrom/dists/$distlink/Release
if [ -e $relfile ] ; then
suite=$(sed -n 's/^Suite: *//p' $relfile)
log "Detected CD with '$suite' distribution"
db_set mirror/suite $suite

break
fi
done

But it never checks that the value of "suite" is correct, ie that
the "[ -e $relfile ]" test condition was ever true.

This causes the cdrom-detect program to exit with an incorrect status
(ok, when in fact detection failed at some level) and a subsequent failure
in cdrom-retriever.

I propose these lines be appended below the "done" statement: -------------------------------- snip ------------------------------------
if [ "X" = "X${suite}" ]; then
fail "Could not determine the package 'suite'. Is the cdrom OK?"
fi
if [ ! -e "/cdrom/dists/$suite/Release" ]; then
fail "No such file '/cdrom/dists/$suite/Release'. Is the cdrom OK?"
fi
-------------------------------- snip ------------------------------------






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