debian-installer: partman, limited; base-install failed, grave error?

From: Leif W (warp-9.9_at_usa.net)
Date: 07/30/04

  • Next message: Greg Folkert: "Re: off-topic, but skills in Linux are important" 
    Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 07:02:18 -0400
To: <debian-user@lists.debian.org>

    Hello,

    If there have been bug reports filed for these issues, please let me know.

    I'm using a Pentium (586) class computer (AMD K6-2 running at 262 MHz in a
    system running at 75 MHz FSB, 37.5 MHz PCI bus), with 128 MB of EDO DRAM. The
    system appears to be stable, and has run at this bus speed for over a year,
    but with an Intel 133 non-MMX CPU and an older BIOS. Mainboard's Intel 430HX
    chipset is using the Intel 82371SB PIIX3 IDE chipset. Network card is LinkSys
    LNE100TX v5.1.

    I'm trying to install a fresh copy of Debian unstable using the unstable
    boot/root floppies from 20040715.

    Initially I tried expert mode, as I'm an experienced user. I've been
    successfully installing various flavors of Linux since 1997, and Debian since
    2001. :-)

    Expert mode failed to install the base system.

    I tried the basic or normal mode (just hit ENTER at the boot prompt). The
    base-install fails there as well.

    I am not sure what to look for in the syslog or messages files. Near the
    beginning of the install, I skip the "load drivers from disk", as there are no
    esoteric devices in this machine, and ide-related modules are reported as
    "missing" (ide-mod, ide-probemod, ide-detect, ide-generic, ide-floppy,
    ide-disk, ide-cd, isofs). The installation guide and howto say that only the
    boot and root disks are generally required. If this has changed, then the
    documentation is stale and misleading! (I'm doing a net-install, so get
    everything besides the network driver from the net! Right? That's how
    net-install used to be defined...) later on, ide-modules and ide-core-modules
    are installed, yet hw-detect still complains about 4 ide modules missing:
    ide-mod, ide-probe-mod, ide-generic, and ide-floppy, thus it proceeds to
    preselect all ide chipset modules in expert, install all ide chipset modules
    in normal, despite me only needing piix, which the kernel recognizes on floppy
    bootup. hw-detect then complains again about all the missing ide modules
    previously listed. Is it completely retarded or what?

    Anyways, there are also several error messages about package dependency
    failures, packages failing to install because a required package has not been
    installed. The very first error I see is dpkg install of base-passwd, which
    complains that libc6 is not installed. Yet the dependencies are ignored. I
    am not sure if this is normal just to get things going, or how to determine
    the first error which I should worry about. In this example, libc6 seems to
    be installed later on (according to messages), so probably nothing to worry
    about.

    There are numerous other pre-depemndancy problems, unpacked but not
    configured, error processing libgnutls11 (--configure), hostname: Unknown host
    (despite my having specified it earlier through the installer). The last
    error in messages is about the libgnutls11 package:

    Errors were encountered while processing:
     libgnutls11

    At first, I tried doing partitioning and formatting myself. I do not like the
    partitioning program at all, it's too limited (doesn't recognize my
    configuration, formats the disk without asking me for options). I prefer
    partitioning my own disks and formatting my own drives before writing data to
    them. On this vintage system, I like to squeeze out every last bit of the
    1.2GB disk space that I can. It's usually more than enough for a text-only
    installation. I partition the disk with /dev/hda1 as a Primary partition, 128
    MB, to use as swap, set it bootable and maximize (NC), and usually install a
    boot loader there (on the MBR). The second and only other partition is an
    Extended partition with 1 Logical partition containing the rest of the
    approximate 1.1GB of space. I prefer ext2 for the performance on this older
    system, as I can live perfectly fine with an occasional e2fsck. I usually
    format the partition with -b 1024 (standard size), and -i 8192 (8 x standard
    1024), as I have found I can convert some inode space to data space, and have
    plenty of inodes left. I've been doing this for years with no problems, so
    please,no comments that the non-standard configuration makes you queasy or you
    find it untasteful. ;-) But do comment if I need to be aware that something
    has dramatically changed where the cfdisk maximize (NC) flag, boot loader on
    swap partition or primary and extended partition mixing causes critical errors
    in Linux. If the configuration would cause an error, then why do the tools
    (fdisk/cfdisk/partman) not recognize and warn about this specific error?

    I have tried using partman to generate the partitions, automated formatting
    (even after I zeroed the beginning of the disks): 1 primary 128 MB swap, 1
    extended with 1 logical ext2 and also tried with ext3. The base-install still
    fails.

    Additionally, with the normal install, netcfg tries to run mii-diag, which
    fails, yet the network card gets an IP address from my local DHCP server, and
    connects just fine through the net and downloads files.

    Ah, in syslog, there's something interesting:

    Jul 30 00:57:30 base-installer: error: exiting on error
    base-installer/debootstr
    ap-failed
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: (process:17071): ^Mtmp 0%
    |
                               | 0 --:-- ETA
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: (process:17071): ^Mtmp 100%
    |**
    ***************************| 34068 00:00 ETA
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: (process:17071):
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: (process:17071): Connecting to
    ftp.us.debian.org
    [216.37.55.114]:80
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: (process:17071): ls:
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: (process:17071): /usr/lib/base-installer.d/*
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: (process:17071): : No such file or directory
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: WARNING **: Configuring 'base-installer'
    failed
    with error code 1
    Jul 30 00:57:41 main-menu[370]: WARNING **: Menu item 'base-installer'
    failed.

    Could this be the cause of all the problems? ;-) How to fix it? Someone
    forget to upload a file, or am I using the wrong server for an install? If I
    should use another server for install, it would be wise not to select this
    server by default, and also to warn about WHY it failed, perhaps by installing
    a dummy package which alerts you of the problem, instead of having me download
    a bunch of files, and mysteriously fail to install after they've downloaded.
    ;-)

    Leif

    Leif

  • Next message: Greg Folkert: "Re: off-topic, but skills in Linux are important"

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