Package: installation-reports INSTALL REPORT
Debian-installer-version: etch i386 netinst daily 2006.12.12 md5sum 135db969cce6d94c64adb9f42764581a uname -a: Linux testhost 2.6.18-3-686 #1 SMP Mon Dec 4 16:41:14 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux Date: 2006.12.13 Method: How did you install? netinst cdrom, with 'installgui' What did you boot off? netinst cdrom If network install, from where? Proxied? used an apt-proxy on the LAN to access packages. Machine: Dell Optiplex 745 tower-format desktop Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz Memory: 1Gb Root Device: /dev/sda1 Root Size/partition table: # fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 62 497983+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 63 427 2931862+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda3 428 9726 74694217+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 428 1035 4883728+ 83 Linux /dev/sda6 1036 1400 2931831 83 Linux /dev/sda7 1401 1522 979933+ 83 Linux /dev/sda8 1523 9726 65898598+ 83 Linux Output of lspci and lspci -n: see attachment (hardware-summary.gz) Base System Installation Checklist: [O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it Initial boot worked: [o] Configure network HW: [o] Config network: [o] Detect CD: [o] Load installer modules: [o] Detect hard drives: [o] Partition hard drives: [o] Create file systems: [o] Mount partitions: [o] Install base system: [o] Install boot loader: [o] Reboot: [e] see "Final Reboot" below Comments/Problems:This was a straightforward install: delete two existing windows partitions, install only debian. Only one disk in the system.
USB keyboard and mouse, no PS/2 ports on the system. I was impressed by the gui installer, it's quite slick now. The only fault I could find was that in some places it changes the cursor in somewhat unexpected ways - specifically, it seems to leave the cursor as the I-beam shape for too long in Country selection and in the partitioning final confirmation screen. I feel it should be changing back to an arrow when you are going to press the "Continue" button. There are probably other screens that have this behaviour but I did not note them. I was briefly confused by the screen offering choices of kernel. I can't recall if there was some explanation about linux-image-2.6-686, ie "pick this if you want to get security patches to your kernel". Perhaps this is/could be covered in the installation guide. In tasksel, I turned off everything, including "Desktop" and "Standard System". I don't know if this has any effect on my rebooting woes (see below). Later, I installed the desktop task. I was _highly_ impressed that the X system was autoconfigured so well (vesa driver, but correctly detected and set the resolution of the LCD monitor). The default GNOME deskstop also looks a lot better than in sarge and feels faster somehow. Great job! Final reboot ------------ The system failed to reboot cleanly at the end of the installation. After getting to the last screen and exiting the install gui ok, the screen cleared and I saw a few lines of text, ending with: Synchronizing SCSI cache for disk sda: Restarting system. . And then nothing. The keyboard was wedged, num lock light was off (it's usually lit during normal operation). I had the cdrom drawer still open, so I closed it and waited. Still nothing, no disk activity or response to keystrokes. Perhaps this is an acpi related problem? I guess the next step should have been to power off the system. The bios rev is 2.0.5 (2006-10-25). I powered off the system manually with the button on the front. When I powered up I encountered more problems. Grub was ok, it showed the correct things and booted the kernel. ehci-hcd and uhci-hcd were loaded, as was usbhid, which detected the mouse and keyboard, and the keyboard was working fine (<shift>-PgUp was working). There were some timeouts with the kernel waiting on the unused SATA ports ata3 and ata4. These might be alarmingly long to a new user but they gave me the time to scroll back up and check on the usb config. Then the kernel attached disk sda, and the output showed that it had detected the partition table. At this point, after the messages sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 < sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8 > sd 0:0:0:0 Attached scsi disk sca the system appeared to lock up. The keyboard was inoperable, I tried a few key presses and then waited. Num lock light was unlit. After about 1 minute or more the system continued to boot. When I was presented with a login prompt, I could not type anything. I tried hotplugging the keyboard and mouse into other USB ports on the back and the front of the box. No change. I saw no messages on the console about usb devices being registered. So I hit the power again, and when I powered up this time, I did not experience the delay noted above and the keyboard worked normally. It's unclear from the logs what was going on. I suspect udev, I thinkI saw something flash past about udev-bottom or so, on the successful boot.
After rebooting I checked the logs; in /var/log/syslog the line after sd 0:0:0:0 Attached scsi disk sca is kernel: Attempting manual resume kernel: kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds if that's any help. I went into tasksel on the command line to install a bit more of the system, (tasksel --new, turned on "standard" and "desktop") and when that completed I rebooted from the command line. This time the system rebooted cleanly. I was also able to 'halt' the system and have it power off correctly. Other comments -------------- I wanted to avoid creating a local user other than root (networked environments often have their home directory space on a file server, and mount it with NFS etc). To achieve this I had to back up through two screens to get to the main menu of the installer. I could not see any other way to skip this. Perhaps it is worth allowing the user to skip adding an unpriveledged local user, by accepting blank input for the new user fields? Or a specific "skip this step" button? I think 'root' still should be created as normal though. ifplugd can be erratic. This may be a hardware issue, but it has consequences. In /etc/network/interfaces I have allow-hotplug eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp but after I finally got the system rebooted I had no network up. I was able to run ifup eth0 and things worked normally but I think for anything except laptops it might be simpler to make the interface 'auto' and point to the documentation of interfaces(5). Before I noticed this, I was attempting to run tasksel and getting nowhere. (There was no indication of a problem from tasksel, but that's a distraction here) I chose to enter a mirror manually (my local apt-proxy host) instead of using one of the officual mirrors. I had two attempts at this, because I typed in http://<proxyname>:9999 instead of the correct <proxyname>:9999. I backed out to the main menu and tried to set the package sources again and this time gave the correct input. Perhaps this is a bug? I think it would be best to either parse the input of that field and only accept the part matching hostname:portnum or use the type:// that was input. For example the user may want a ftp:// source instead of an http:// one. The installer appears to have left the /cdrom/ source in sources.list in this case (ie does not comment it out). Is that normal/expected? For some reason there were two cdrom lines in sources.list. Perhaps that's it - a second line got written in there on the second attempt noted above, and was not commented out later? The installer has made tremendous strides forward! Install logs and other status info is available in /var/log/debian-installer/. Once you have filled out this report, mail it to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
hardware-summary.gz
Description: Binary data