Debian Bug report logs - #24503
dinstall can't find any hard drives with 1.1.105 kernel

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Colin Plumb <colin@nyx.net>

To: submit@bugs.debian.org

Subject: dinstall can't find any hard drives with 1.1.105 kernel

Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 01:56:40 -0600 (MDT)

Package: boot-floppies
Version: 2.0.8

I'm trying to install Debian on a system that needs a 2.1.x kernel
(for the device support), so I tried compiling a suitable 2.1.105
kernel to drop in in place of "linux" when installing, and discovered
that dinstall thought there were no hard drives.

After a considerable amount of digging, I found some suspisious code
in /usr/src/boot-floppies/utilities/libfdisk/fdisk.c which
is supposed to ignore CD-ROMs:

            if ((fd = open( device, O_RDONLY )) >= 0 && !timed_out) {
fprintf(stderr, "Opened %s\n", device);
                alarm( 0 );
                if (ioctl(fd, CDROMVOLREAD, &cdvol )!= 0) {
perror(device);
      /* if returns EINVAL or EPERM, this is not a CD-ROM drive */
                    if ((errno==EINVAL)||(errno==EPERM)) {
                        if (ioctl(fd, BLKGETSIZE, &size))
                            size = 0; /* don't complain, size not really 
                                         used yet */
                        size >>= 1; /* convert from 512-byte sectors to kB */
                        fdisk_add_disk( device, size );

                        parse_partition( device, fd );
                    }
                }
                close( fd );
            }

The printouts to stderr are my debugging code which says "Input/output
error" on all my hard drives on a running 2.1.105 system.

It was a significant struggle to get dinstall compiled (no Makefile
seems to do it; I had to add ../busybox/block_device.o to the BBOXOBJS
line in dinstall's Makefile, and then delete main.o so I could
recompile a version with an actual main function.

I could patch the code and make it work, except that I have so far been
completely unable to create boot floppies.  It appears that there are a
*lot* of undocumented dependencies, and finding them is frustrating.

(Hell, I still havem't figured out much of anything about dpkg, which
is frustrating in the extreme.  There are fifteen different utility programs
for doing things with packages in various forms, and I have no clue
how they fit together into a system.  A "theory of operation" document
would be very very valuable.)
-- 
	-Colin

Message #10 received at 24503-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com>

To: 24503-done@bugs.debian.org

Subject: dinstall can't find any hard drives with 1.1.105 kernel

Date: 18 Aug 1999 01:25:47 -0400

You reported problems with the 1.1.105 kernel and seeing hard drives
in the boot-floppies package over a year ago.

Sorry if your report was neglected; however, this bug has been fixed
in the meantime.  Slink boot-floppies do detect partitions at least
mostly properly, and it ships with the 2.0 kernel.  Moreover, the
difficulties you observed compiling the package have also gone by the
wayside, for the most part.

--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>

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