SHORT VERSION:
I'm trying to install Debian 1.3 from the newest Tri-Linux CD, but my
machine hangs whenever the serial module is loaded. I have two serial
ports (COM1 and COM2 under DOS.) Only a reset has any effect. My
system, including serial ports, works w/o problems with DOS, Win3.1,
Win95, RedHat 4.0, RedHat 4.1, and maybe even Debian 1.2.10 (see
below). AFAIK, my serial ports are not weird. The last few messages
during bootup, copied verbatim, are:
Configuring serial ports..../dev/ttyS0: No such device
failed...
Trying to load the serial module manually...
Serial driver version 4.13 with no serial options enabled
tty00 at 0x03f8 (irq=4) is a 16550A
tty01 at 0x02f8 (irq=3) is a 16550A
This occurs when the machine reboots just before invoking dselect to
finish installation.
My hardware consists of:
ASUS motherboard (I forget the model #; it's about 1.5 years old)
EIDE hard disk, 1G
BusLogic BT-946C
SCSI hard disk, 2.1G
SCSI CD-ROM drive
SCSI Zip drive
Diamond Stealth something video card
32M memory + 24M swap
MouseSystems compatible mouse & US Robotics Sportster
connected to serial ports
The serial HOWTO doesn't help. I want to emphasize, I did not have
any problem with my serial ports under any version of RedHat. As far
as Debian 1.2.10 is concerned, I ran into unrelated problems after the
reboot installing packages in dselect. There were no serial port
problems, but I'm not 100% sure if the serial module was loaded.
PROBABLY MORE DETAILS THAN YOU WANT TO KNOW VERSION:
I've successfully installed RedHat 4.0 soon after it came out. Aside
from getting connected to my ISP, no problems. Recently, I started
looking to upgrade, and saw that there was a distribution I've never
heard of: Debian. Using dejanews to look at relevant articles, it
seemed that Debian had some advantages over RedHat: a better package
system, lots of developers, and a package to allow upgrades via ppp.
Eager to give it a try, I went out and bought Infomagic's April '97 CD
set. I wanted to repartition my disk, so I figured I'd reinstall the
system from scratch after I backed my /home & co., but before I did
so, I wanted to see how easy it would be to upgrade RedHat from 4.0 ->
4.1. It was pretty easy; I didn't run into any problems. Anyway, I
went and tried to install Debian 1.2 from scratch. I got as far as
dselect, when the install phase complained about some packages. I did
a search on the web to see if anyone else had similar problems, and
(just my luck!) I found some articles about Infomagic leaving out some
packages. Grrr. Ok, I installed Redhat 4.1 from scratch, configured
X and ppp to a new ISP, and was up and running within a few hours. A
few days later, I found that Redhat 4.2 was coming out. Grrr. I
ordered the new Tri-Linux CD, figuring that I'll give Debian another
try, and even if it didn't work, I could go to Redhat 4.2.
Now comes the interesting part. When configuring the device drivers,
I tried to install 'serial'. It reported:
tty00 at 0x03f8 (irq=4) is a 16550A
tty01 at 0x02f8 (irq=3) is a 16550A
and then hung. I waited for a couple of minutes, and then a couple
more. Not a peep. I reset and started the installation from the
beginning. This time, I didn't choose serial, figuring I could set it
up later. I got through the device configuration, etc. When the
machine rebooted, it evidently tried to load the serial module anyway,
with the same results. The last few messages were:
Configuring serial ports..../dev/ttyS0: No such device
failed...
Trying to load the serial module manually...
Serial driver version 4.13 with no serial options enabled
tty00 at 0x03f8 (irq=4) is a 16550A
tty01 at 0x02f8 (irq=3) is a 16550A
I hung after the last line. Just in case I wasn't giving the machine
enough time, I went away and came back about 5 minutes later. Didn't
help. I found the spot in the initialization scripts where
/bin/setserial was invoked (I guess it was the one complaining about
ttyS0), and commented out that and the loading of the serial module.
I was then able to boot and start up dselect, which hung trying to
install gpm. (Duh! I should've know not to install that.) I tried
again, this time trying to uninstall gpm. For some reason, it tried
to activate it during the uninstall (didn't expect that), hanging the
machine again.
I looked in /dev, which had ttyS0 through ttyS3, just as it said in
the Serial-HOWTO. There were no cua devices, so I created them -- I
figured it couldn't hurt. No improvement.
Doing a search through this mailing list and comp.os.linux.* via
dejanews, I wasn't able to find anyone else having this problem. I
figure I'll post a query here before I giving up.
Does anyone have a clue as to what could be causing this? Thanks.
- Ed
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