Quoting Christian Perrier <bubu...@debian.org> >> Ok, tried a few more times. I usually get the same kernel panic screen,
>Did you try in expert mode, ie choosing it from the "Advanced options" >in the boot menu. Yes, I tried expert as well as regular. >In expert mode, when you reach the HW detection step, you'll get a >question about PCMCIA options. They're not necessarily relevant but >checking if the crash happens before or after it would help No question about PCMCIA before getting to the network detection screen/status bar. > ... >Some drivers in 2.6.18 provided firmware blobs that have been >extracted from the source and are now provided as separate udebs: >r...@mykerinos:~> apt-cache search firmware 2100 >firmware-ipw2x00 - Binary firmware for Intel Pro Wireless 2100, 2200 and 2915 That explains the missing firmware. >If that firmware is needed for ipw2100, you'll be prompted about >this....but you're not, which means the crash happens before..:-) Correct. >> Anything else I can do? More tests? >Before the network devices screen (for instance, when prompted for >language), could you switch to VT2 (Alt+F2) and, from there edit >/bin/ethdetect.sh >Add "-x" to the first line: >#!/bin/sh -x >Then go back to VT1, continue to the step where the crash happens and >sitch to VT4 before it happens. As ethdetect.sh will be in debug mode, >we'll see all its output and could narrow down the exact line where >the crash happens. Ok, did that and also vga=771. I was hoping to get a smaller font to see more of the backtrace. This is what I got: [ output of ethdetect -x - lsifaces (3 lines) sed (4), grep (4) and sed (3) ] Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: (process:9628) + ip link set eth0 up Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: (process:9628) + ip link set eth0 down Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: (process:9628) + ip link set eth1 up Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: (process:9628) + ip link set eth1 down Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: (process:9628) + check-missing-firmware Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: (process:9628) + sysfs-update-devnames Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: (process:9628) + cleanup Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: (process:9628) + rm -f /tmp/devnames-static.txt Dec 22 15:42:48 main-menu[1328]: DEBUG: resolver (libslang2-udeb): package doesn't exist (ignored) It didn't crash! After that I proceeded to console 1 and did see the screen explaining that I needed the missing firmware - ipw2100-1.3.fw. As I had thought, even with the missing firmware, the culprit wasn't the wireless device. First thought: race condition (the panic message contained a backtrace of different threads), so then I tried multiple times with only one change at at time: expert mode, regular mode, ethdetect -x, vga=771, vga normal. It turns out that the culprit was the vga option. With vga=771, I get no crash/panic in either expert or regular mode, with sh -x in ethdetect or not. It might still be a race condition but if so it seems to be triggered by something related to the display. Very strange. The display works fine (with a big font) in normal mode. In 771 mode, the font is smaller and the curses windows sharper. Even though I now have a work-around, I'm willing to keep debugging if if would be useful. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-boot-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org