Package: installation-reports
Debian-installer-version: local build from CVS, last updated March 3
uname -a: Linux transitory 2.4.22-r4k-ip22 #1 Mon Feb 9 21:48:42 CET 2004 mips
GNU/Linux
Date: March 8
Method: tftp netboot, with append="devfs=mount,dall DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low"
Machine: SGI Indy
Processor: R4400, 200 MHz (mips, r4k-ip22)
Memory: 64 MB
Root Device: 2.1 GB SCSI
Root Size/partition table:
/dev/sda1 - 0.2 GB swap
/dev/sda2 - 1.9 GB /, ext3
Output of lspci: n/a
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [O]
Config network: [O]
Detect CD: [ ]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [E]
Create file systems: [E with partman, O with old system]
Mount partitions: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Reboot: [E]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Comments/Problems:
I chose to install testing. Unstable fails for the same reason as
reported for sparc in #236364.
"Detecting hardware" was run twice - the second time through, the selected
menu item advanced properly.
The partitioning tool proved troublesome.
- Default partition table selection should be 'dvh'.
- When editing an individual partition, the name option doesn't seem
to do anything, and any name entered in that screen does not appear
when you continue. The bottom of the dialog box also overlaps the
Continue/Go Back buttons, which show up as "<Continue>k>". (Other
narrow dialog boxes in partconf do similar things.)
- Toggling the "boot flag" option does nothing.
- The partition table created is no good.
Here's the partition table as created by partman:
Disk disc (SGI disk label): 67 heads, 62 sectors, 1009 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4154 * 512 bytes
----- partitions -----
Pt# Device Info Start End Sectors Id System
1: part1 1 93 386322 3 SGI raw
2: part2 94 1008 3800910 3 SGI raw
11: part3 0 1009 4193800 6 SGI volume
The partitions themselves are not given the usual 0x82 or 0x83 types.
Also, no volume header is created; since that's where the bootloader
should be installed, the system is unbootable at the end.
Attempting to continue at this point caused the menu to loop back
to "Partition disks" instead. mkreiserfs was run, judging by the
messages on console 3, but the partition was not mounted on /target.
Selecting "configure and mount partitions" froze the installer
completely.
After rebooting, I fdisk'ed the drive from the shell:
----- partitions -----
Pt# Device Info Start End Sectors Id System
1: part1 swap 5 95 378014 82 Linux swap
2: part2 boot 96 1008 3792602 83 Linux native
9: part3 0 4 20770 0 SGI volhdr
11: part4 0 1008 4191386 6 SGI volume
Partitions 9 and 11 were created automatically by creating an SGI
partition table (commands "x", "g"). Filesystems were added with
the "configure and mount partitions" tool.
After successfully installing the base system, the menu selection
moved all the way back up to "Partition disks". Moving back down,
I wasn't given the option to install a boot loader.
Rebooting nonetheless, I was unable to start the system with either
"root=/dev/sda2" as suggested, or "root=/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/
lun0/part2", both either with or without "devfs=mount,dall".
After restarting the installer, dropping to a shell, and chroot'ing to
the installation, I was able to apt-get install arcboot. A warning
was mistakenly issued about the boot image not being an ELF image, due
to the absence of the 'file' command. (This has been reported as
#236970.) Fortunately, this also turned up a different problem:
the kernel-image-2.4.22-r5k-ip22 package had been installed, which
will not boot on this machine! Installing the ....r4k-ip22 image
instead and rerunning arcboot allowed the system to boot successfully.
base-config was not launched on reboot - I had to boot to single user
mode, set a password for root, and then run base-config manually.
Probably a side effect of the manual arcboot procedure?
One final filesystem gotcha that I didn't encounter, but that should be
documented: the mips kernel images only have ext2 and ext3 compiled in.
reiserfs options were present during partitioning, but (so far as I
saw) didn't warn that they'd be unbootable.
--
Nicholas Breen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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