Begging the indulgence of another cross-post, a more detailed
description of the tasksel bug appears below for the benefit
of the debian-boot maintainers...
> Andris Kalnozols wrote:
> >
> > Problem #1: Cannot get past the base system install because tasksel
> > keeps looping at the prompt to mount CD #1.
> >
> > Problem #2: There was no network driver that I could find on the 3.0
> > Debian CDs that supports the Broadcom device.
Donald Spoon wrote:
>
> I did some snooping around on this one, and found out tg3.o driver is
> NOT in my "full" 2.4.18 kernel, but is included in my "full" 2.4.19
> kernel. Both of these were installed from the Debian "kernel-image"
> packages after I had done a bf2.4 initial install.
>
> The bf2.4 boot-floppies have been trimmed to fit on a floppy. Only the
> most likely drivers are included, and unfortunately there will always be
> that 10 percent that have equipment not covered. Sorry...
>
> I understand the packages available from Debian are spread across the 7
> CDs, with the most frequently used residing on CD #1. I suspect your
> tasksel is looking for a needed package that is NOT on your current CD.
> The only answer to this is to get CD #1 if you must run tasksel.
My initial description was rather vague. I have burned the first three
CDs and the Debian installer dutifully asks if I would like to read them
and index the available packages. It does this and puts the appropriate
entries for the CDs into /etc/apt/sources.list. The defect seems to be
with tasksel itself. After going through the menu and choosing a minimal
server configuration, I get prompted to mount CD #1 and hit return. Doing
so does nothing but loop at the same prompt. There was an instance during
one of my many install cycles where tasksel recognized that CD #1 was
mounted, but I was not able to duplicate the situation. Trying to load
Debian onto another identical server gave the same results.
> Here is a "kludge" suggestion... If you can get a "minimal" install
> done on the machine to where you have floppy and CDROM access at the
> command line, you might be able to transfer the 2.4.19 kernel package to
> it after downloading it on your other machine. Once you get it
> installed, you should be able to bring up the network and complete your
> install from the internet. I would suggest you temporarily skip the
> tasksel step (don't choose anything) and see if the install will
> complete. This should give you a minimal "working" system... command
> line only. If this can't be done, then getting hold of CD #1 is
> probably necessary. For the kernel-image transfer, I suspect the
> package is too large to fit on a floppy. That is why I mentioned CDROM
> access above. You could burn it on a CD and transfer it that way.
>
> Alternatively ("kludge #2"), to establish network access you could
> temporarily put in another NIC that has a driver in the bf2.4 kernel and
> get the files you need that way. This might end up being the easiest by
> far...you could d/l anthing you need (including packages on CD #1) off
> the internet. Once you get the kernel-image-2.4.19 installed you should
> be ready to go!
>
> HTH & gives you some ideas.
>
> Cheers,
> -Don Spoon-
Thanks, Don, for the research in turning up the necessary driver in the
2.4.19 kernel image. Your second suggestion of bootstrapping network
connectivity by plugging in a less exotic NIC is definitely the path of
least resistance. Much appreciated.
Andris
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