Re: dbootstrap segfaults on "Configure the Base System"

[edmundo@rano.demon.co.uk]

Shurik:

> I've made some additional testing and found out that dbootstrap just segfaults
> while trying to "Configure the Base System". First of all, its PID changes
> when it goes to the initial message. That meens, I guess, it was restarted
> (the same behaviour if I kill it by hands). So I've try to execute it from VT2
> and got that "segmentation fault" message I was expecting. VT2 became unusable
> afterwards, so I had to boot from floppy again. 
> 
> Could it be something wrong with my hardware configuration? I'm installing
> Linux on sda4. sda1 is Solaris and sda2 is swap. Are there some limitations
> on that?

I've had exactly the same experience: configure_base() seems to cause
the process to die, and it doesn't get as far as writing
/target/etc/fstab, though the file was created, it seems.

Could it be that is_nfs_partition() does it? It uses code in libfdisk/
which is reasonably complex and might contain an undetected
architecture-dependent bug. I'm just guessing wildly.

My work-around was to go to VT2, write /target/etc/fstab manually,
then remove /target/sbin/unconfigured,sh, so that dbootstrap thinks
that the base system has been configued. (It hasn't really; there are
several other things that dbootstrap would have done.)

# cat > /target/etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options>                  <dump> <pass>
/dev/sda2       /             ext2   defaults,errors=remount-ro 0      1
/dev/sda1       none          swap   sw                         0      0
proc            /proc         proc   defaults                   0      0
# mv /target/sbin/unconfigured.sh /target/sbin/unconfigured.sh.hide
#

I now have a working system that boots off the boot floppy. (Just as
well I didn't miss out that step!)

Can anyone tell me how to boot without using a floppy, if that's
possible? Or is at least possible to read the kernel off the hard
drive, even if SILO has to come off a floppy?

I put Debian GNU/Linux on a nice new Fujitsu drive with SCSI ID 0.
Most of my attempts to boot using it, either from the PROM or the SILO
prompt, result in a "Bad magic number in disk label".

Edmund