On Sep 2, 2016, at 6:30 PM, Rick Thomas <rbtho...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 2, 2016, at 5:12 PM, Vagrant Cascadian <vagr...@debian.org> wrote:
>
>> I'd be curious if you re-install and delete each partition individually
>> and re-create manually vs. using one of the auto-partitioning methods.
>
> I’ll give this a try over the weekend and report back what I find.
>
> Is it possible that the auto-partitioning process during installation has
> somehow clobbered the u-boot image on the SD card? How would I test for that?
>
> Rick
I did the experiment — manual partitioning did not help. But I sorta fumbled it
in an interesting way that sheds some light on the question I asked in the
quoted section above.
Here’s what I did:
1) Retrieved the installer and put it on a uSD card as described in
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/installer-armhf/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/README.concatenateable_images
2) Halted the CuBox-i4 and removed all external peripherals from it (including
the uSD it boots from) and inserted the installer uSD.
3) Connected to the serial console and re-applied power.
4) Answered questions until it got to partitioning.
5) Chose “manual” partitioning. Since there was no other storage peripherals
it only offered me the uSD, which (as a result of 1, above) had a large free
space. I told it to use the free space for / and format that as ext2. I
failed to delete the installer partition. (This is the sorta-fumble I
mentioned earlier.)
6) I did not create a /boot or swap partition.
I have attached a screen shot of the screen at the end of the process…
After proceeding and answering questions, I ended up with an uSD card with two
partitions. The second partition contains the installed system; the first
partition still contains the installer.
When it got to the end of the installation, it tried to reboot — presumably
into the newly installed system in partition 2, but did not succeed in
rebooting.
It’s last words were:
> Sent SIGKILL to all processes
> Requesting system reboot
> [ 39.132949] reboot: Restarting system
Then nothing.
This is what we were expecting. The interesting part comes next.
I pulled the power plug and re-plugged. It ran u-boot and booted — but not
into the installed system. Rather it booted into the installer — which,
remember, was still present in partition 1.
From this I conclude that the u-boot environment is not getting updated by the
installer. And u-boot itself in not getting clobbered by anything in the
installation process.
Bottom line — the problem is verifiably in the late stages of the installer
when it’s trying to make the system bootable. It’s not a problem with the
auto-partitioning, and it’s not a problem with u-boot.
Hope it helps!
Rick
