On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 11:09:15AM +0000, Phil Blundell wrote: > On Thu, 2002-02-14 at 04:06, Mark Zimmerman wrote: > > One of my tests of dbootstrap (in trying to get past the white screen > > of death) resulted in a register dump to the screen. I was wondering > > why it didn't dump core instead? Is this something related to how > > dbootstrap is built or is it caused somehow by the installation > > environment? I was hoping for a core file in case the builder could > > make use of it. > > Well, it would be easy enough to add an option to enable core dumps. > I'm not convinced it would be useful, though: > > Dbootstrap doesn't always have a filesystem available that it can > reasonably dump core onto. The only place where there is likely to be > enough space is the target install disk - this isn't accessible at all > during the early stages of installation, and the user might well find it > difficult to retrieve the core dump from there even if one was created - > the machine may not have a floppy drive, and the core may be too big to > fit on a disk anyway. I don't think the root disk includes enough tools > to copy the core away over the network either. > > The builder should be able to use the information in the register dump > to get a handle on the problem in most cases. Admittedly the user may > find transcribing it into an email a bit tedious, but at least it's > straightforward to do. > I recognize the truth of all of this in the general case, but I may be close to becoming a special case. Since it didn't crash until I got to the 'Install Base System' phase, I already have a working network connection and plenty of mounted partitions. I tranferred an ftp client and the curses and readline libraries to the system via floppy and tried to run ftp. Unfortunately, it said:
ftp: ftp/tcp: unknown service and quit. When I get back to working on this tonight, I'll try copying libc also and/or look for an appropriate kernel module to load. Anyhow, if I can get ftp working, that will open up some possibilities: 1. Acquire or build a debug version of dbootstrap and see what happens. 2. ftp the base_system.tgz file to the hard drive and try to install from there. By the way, the current woody installation manual does not have a link to such a file. Is there one somewhere? -- Mark -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
