Package: debian-installer
Severity: important
Dear Maintainer,
I would like to bring the following problem with the debian-installer to your
attention:
I tried to install Debian 8.0/8.1i/8.2 in a virtual machine on "KVM on IBM
System z". The installation can not completed, because the network device can
not be configured and the following message is displayed:
[!!] Configure a network using static addressing
Installation step failed
An installation step failed. You can try to run the failing item
again from the menu, or skip it and choose something else. The
failing step is: Configure a network using static addressing
<Continue>
Further analysis shows that the installer insists on having a qeth network
device, which is obivously not there because the VM has a virtio_net device.
Sep 4 13:24:37 netcfg-static[183]: INFO: Found link on eth0
Sep 4 13:24:37 netcfg-static[183]: ERROR **: no qeth found: virtio_net
Sep 4 13:24:37 main-menu[159]: WARNING **: Configuring 'netcfg-static' failed
with error code 1
Sep 4 13:24:37 main-menu[159]: WARNING **: Menu item 'netcfg-static' failed.
Sep 4 13:24:39 main-menu[159]: INFO: Modifying debconf priority limit from
'high' to 'medium'
Sep 4 13:24:39 debconf: Setting debconf/priority to medium
Looking at the source code of the installer it seems in case of a s390x it is
assumed that the network driver should be "qeth".
"./packages/netcfg/netcfg-common.c" 1736L, 49379C
#if defined(__s390__)
// Layer 3 qeth on s390(x) cannot do arping to test gateway reachability.
int is_layer3_qeth(const char *iface)
{
.....
if (strcmp(driver, "qeth") != 0) {
di_error("no qeth found: %s", driver);
goto out;
}
This assumption is no longer true with a VM for "KVM on IBM System z" and
prevents installing a Debian VM from ISO. There are workarounds to get a Debian
VM up and running, but the simple way to install from ISO is not working.
Please let me know if I can be of further help,
Regards, Gerhard Stenzel
