On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 10:51:56PM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 03:00:41PM -0600, lee wrote: > > On Thu, Jan 01, 2009 at 05:56:25PM -0200, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote: > > > lee wrote: > > > > Well, how do you install on SATA disks when the installer can't access > > > > them? It still has the option to load more modules from a floppy disk, > > > > but I haven't had a floppy disk drive for years ... With no system > > > > installed, you couldn't create those disks anyway. > > > > > > > > > > You should be able to load them from a USB stick. Maybe it's not fully > > > automatic, but you can switch in another console during installation, > > > mount the disk, and then direct the installer to load from that directory. > > > > Well, I don't have an USB stick --- though a card reader instead > > should work. But how/where do you get the modules? And how do you put > > them onto the USB device while installing? > > > > A USB stick is a few Euro :)
About $14, and I already have SD cards and a cardreader, so I'd rather use that :) > Go to the non-free archive for Debian packages. Look for > firmware-non-free packages. I've recently had to use the bnx2 > drivers for Broadcom ethernet cards. The modules I need to access the disks come with standard and Debian kernels. They are not non-free. And then, when you look at http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst, it doesn't tell you that the installer is missing crucial modules to access SATA disks (which are the default nowadays), or where to get missing modules. There are also no floppy disk images of the installer for download (like there used to be), which would allow you do download another disk image containing more modules. Still the installer keeps prompting for a floppy disk and tells you to insert the disk, just to find out that there is no floppy disk drive installed. Why doesn't the page tell you, like it did when floppy images were available, that you might need more modules and offers you to download another CD image? Why aren't those modules just on the installer CD? It's not that the CD image would get too big to fit on a CD or to download --- and if it was, there could always be the minimal installer image for computers older than 4 or 5 years and another one with all that's missing on the minimal image. The installer could also give you instructions about how to get more modules or just download the missing modules automatically during the installation, just like it does with other things. > Download the .deb on another machine. [Assuming you're using Linux > here]. What do you do when you don't have one? Buy a windoze CD and another hard disk, install windoze on that disk, get the needed files, install Debian, sell the windoze CD and disk? And before you can do that, how do you know where to get the missing kernel modules for the installer, and how do you know which ones are missing? I'd like to know that for the next time I'll try to install. > Carry the USB stick across to the machine you need it on. Boot the Lenny > installer - at some point the dialog will tell you that you need > non-free modules and will ask you for a floppy/USB stick to load > the modules from. No, it didn't tell me that it needs modules. It only told me that no disks had been detected. If I hadn't known that a module is missing and that it does work once the right module is available, I could have concluded that Linux is just too old to run on even "old" (like two or three years) hardware ... > Insert the stick when prompted. The installer offers to read modules from a floppy disk, not from an USB device. > > These modules need to be available to the installer out of the > > box. It's not like I'd be using some unusual hardware ... > > > > > > What is not unusual to you is unusual to other people :) What is unusual about SATA disks and controllers? Go to your favourite computer store --- now or a year (or even longer) ago --- and try to buy a computer or a mainboard that doesn't have SATA disks or an SATA controller. You'd have a very hard time to find one. Also keep in mind that this was the amd64 installer. Which system that can run 64bit software doesn't have an SATA controller? > The reason that the modules are in non-free is precisely because > they have licence conditions or similar which prevent us putting > them in the Debian archive proper. The "AHCI SATA support" in the standard and Debian kernels creates something that is non-free? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
