Package: installation-reports Version: 20040103 Debian-installer-version: sarge-i386-netinst.iso from http://people.debian.org/~manty/testing/netinst/i386/20040103/
Also applies to the copies of sarge-i386-netinst.iso from http://people.debian.org/~manty/testing/netinst/i386/daily/ dated 2004-01-01 and 2003-12-31 Date: Jan. 3, 2004, 8:00 p.m. Method: Booted from CD burned from sarge-i386-netinst.iso Base System Installation Checklist: Initial boot worked: [O] Configure network HW: [ ] Config network: [ ] Detect CD: [ ] Load installer modules: [E] Detect hard drives: [ ] Partition hard drives: [ ] Create file systems: [ ] Mount partitions: [ ] Install base system: [ ] Install boot loader: [ ] Reboot: [O] [O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it Deja vu all over again. The following may be familiar to you. Whenever I have attempted to install, I get this error message: "The integrity check for <FOO> failed. It is most likely corrupt. Aborting." After that, I can reboot and get back to my old system. where <FOO> varies from one attempted install to the next, sometimes "base-installer," or "baseconfig-udeb," or "bterm-unifont." To check the integrity of the CD that I burned, I ran "dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/tmp/copy-of-sarge-i386-netinst.iso" and checked to see if the MD5SUM of copy-of-sarge-i386-netinst.iso matched that of the original sarge-i386-netinst.iso that I burned to the CD. It did. I also made sure that the diff command reported no difference between copy-of-sarge-i386-netinst.iso and sarge-i386-netinst.iso. End of the deja vu, now for the new stuff. Once I saw the error message, I switched to another virtual terminal and ran "dmesg | grep hdb". One of the lines read hdb: ATAPI 6x CD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache, DMA ^^^ This explains everything. I know from experience that a good way to read garbage from my CD-ROM is to try to access it via DMA. (That is a good way to read garbage from most older ATAPI devices, as I'm sure you know. ) I bet that what's going on is that when udebs are read from the CD-ROM, sooner or later, one of them is read wrong, which is probably why the integrity check fails. What's really wrong with this picture is that passing the standard-issue kernel option "ide=nodma" doesn't work. "dmesg | grep hdb" still reports the same thing. This is not good. (Yes, at the boot prompt, I type "linux ide=nodma", not just "ide=nodma".) A good question is why DMA is enabled for ATAPI devices at all, since Debian is supposed to be installable on older hardware, which is where DMA problems tend to crop up. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
