Re: etch installation probs (CD?)

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 09:18 -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 09:27:33AM +0100, michael wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 07:41 -0700, Alan Ianson wrote:
> > > On Mon July 30 2007 07:10, michael wrote:
> > > > Folks, I've a new machine with a "writemaster" CDROM drive. When trying
> > > > to install Debian 4.0 from iso image burnt to CD, it initially
> > > > recognises the CD and starts the installation but fails at the screen
> > > > where the CD drive is to be recognised (for continuing the
> > > > installation). I've tried various module/device combos but all to no
> > > > avail. I've looked about on Google but not come up with a working
> > > > solution.
> > > >
> > > > Has anybody else successfully uses this CDROM drive to install Debian,
> > > > or have suggestions on how I can determine a working module/device
> > > > combo. Please let me know if you need any further information.
> > >
> > > I've installed etch amd64 and i386 successfully many times. I'm not sure what
> > > the problem is but you might be able to use the daily install from testing to
> > > get going. You can get the it from here..
> > >
> > > http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/i386/iso-cd/
> > >
> > > If you get the businesscard iso and boot it in expert mode it will prompt you
> > > if you want to install stable, testing or unstable. I would try to install
> > > stable and if your successful run "apt-cdrom add" for your cd or dvd images
> > > after you boot and install whatever else you want.
> > >
> > > That image contains nothing but the installer, you need to have an active
> > > network connection to install with it.
> >
> > I've just tried the 'debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso' (build 30 July
> > 2007) but it also fails on recognising the CD and network...
>
> I've seen this before on this list. There are some motherboards now
> that have changed the way CD's work. Essentially, they are available
> as boot devices, but once the boot starts, the CD drive is no longer
> available. Something to do with it not being a true IDE interface, but
> emulated IDE over SATA or something and then the bios hides it or some
> other goblety-gook like that. I don't think changing the CD drive is
> going to help one bit.
>
> A few things you could try: booting from USB with some kind of
> bootable media with the installer on it there; dragging the harddrive
> to a different machine and donig the base install there and then
> completing it on the new machine (warning, this may require more than
> just an install -- you may need to build special initrd's to include
> _ALL_ modules to boot on the new machine); scrounge a floppy drive and
> use the netinstall floppies to get yourself going; setting up the
> installer on a network and netbooting into it.
>
> Can you get a live-cd to boot? I'd be surprised as I assume they
> suffer from the same problem, but if you could get one to go, then use
> debootstrap to install.
>
> There may be other solutions, but that's what I've got.

The machine came with fedora on (which can read (and write) to the CD/DVD drive). If I burn a ubuntu installer CD that can use the CD okay too (I've not fully installed ubuntu at this moment). I'll check what debootstrap does.

Thanks, Michael

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