Package: installation-reports Boot method: netboot Image version: http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/debian-installer/amd64/{linux,initrd.gz} Date: 2017-05-13 18:00:00 CDT
Machine: Gigabyte E350 based box-o-parts (previously had Jessie, etc.) Processor: AMD E-350 Memory: 2G Partitions: 100G boot & root, 2G swap Output of lspci -knn (or lspci -nn): Base System Installation Checklist: [O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it Initial boot: [O] Detect network card: [O] Configure network: [O] Detect CD: [O] Load installer modules: [O] Detect hard drives: [O] Partition hard drives: [O] Install base system: [O] Clock/timezone setup: [O] User/password setup: [O] Install tasks: [O] Install boot loader: [O] Overall install: [O] Comments/Problems: Unlike all previous releases, this time it seems it truly needed the firmware for the Realtek NIC. As that has never made any difference in the past, did not install... and it had no trouble configuring and completing the install over the network without that driver. So it was a shock to find that there was no working network after rebooting. Downloaded Realtek firmware and installed it via flash drive, and then the network came up just as you'd expect. But after installing a few other things and rebooting - once again, no network. Also, network devices are renamed from traditional eth0 to some BSD-like unreadable code name. From what Google found for me, this is apparently another "it wasn't broke, so everyone's changing it" and Debian is just running late, but wtf? Added section to interfaces for the unmemorable new name and that worked after an explicit ifup... oh yeah, reboot again and see what happens. ... Okay, that's got it, apparently. So perhaps it failed to setup correctly because the firmware wasn't present during the install, even though that (1) has never been necessary, at least for the 8168 (or similar?), and (2) the NIC worked fine all through the install. -- It isn't that secrets are never needed in security. It's that they are never desirable. -- Whitfield Diffie