Not going well...

[denny]

Debian is still an unfriendly beast to install... it doesn't even appear to have automatic hardware detection, which Red Hat and SuSE have been doing for years.

This morning my attempts to install it have fallen to a fairly serious new problem (last night's half-dozen attempts were mostly victims of non-serious TMTOWTDI problems typical with a new distribution). This morning it keeps getting 9/10 of the way through the install, then b0rking out with a kernel panic when it loads the PCMCIA sub-system at boot... despite the fact that it does this successfully on the reboot before this one in the install process. It's done it three times now, I'm wondering if the CD got scratched when I put it away last night or something :(

Argh. Bloody technology.

Update:
Okay, this is a nice fuck-up. A security update for PCMCIA must have been released sometime overnight. Me being a good boy, I was saying 'yes' to 'use security updates', of course. When it goes and fetches the security update halfway through the install, it only tries to update the PCMCIA system without shutting it down first - no wonder it kernel panics.

The annoying bit is, it asks you earlier in the install whether PCMCIA updates should always shut down/never shut down/ask you first, and I said 'ask'... and it didn't.

I just reinstalled for a fifth time, said 'no' to security updates, and it successfully booted. I'll try putting the security lines into apt/sources later and see if it works any better with an up-and-running system rather than an installing one...

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Debug it with a mallet.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Mmmm bugger. Download and install the latest stable kernel (2.4.22 I think) from www.kernel.org and try that. You'll need to check some options in networking (can't remember which ones) to ensure DHCP still works, but otherwise it will allow you to do whatever you like :)

Oh, and I always install the 2.4 (.18) kernel when I install by using the bf24 option just after I've booted the install CD. (F3 for options)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

That's the kernel I'm using, yes. See my update for resolution (hopefully) of PCMCIA problem.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

is pcmcia-modules fixed for 2.4.18 bf24 yet then? had a broken dependency in stable only three days ago (when last i looked) and i had to tell poor person who needed help to try installing kernel + pcmcia-modules from unstable instead ...

-m-

[zotz]

I know it's a cliche, but it's true - the effort goes into the upgrade procedure, because you'll use it more often. Having said which, there's continuous talk about new installers, so maybe it'll improve.