[debian-lan-devel] Debian-LAN wheezy iso (20140302) didn't work

[Andreas B. Mundt]

Hi Franklin,

On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 10:38:47AM +0800, Franklin Weng wrote:
>
> Finally I created a DVD of Debian-LAN wheezy and used it to install my
> testing laptop.  I selected mainserver profile and choosed "combined".
>  During installation it wiped my hard drive (ouch) and showed "$LOGUSER is
> undefined".  After installation and rebooting it has nothing, not even grub
> or any boot loader.
>
> I tried installing for three times.  The second time it even failed to
> install.  The messages are:
>
> <fatal error messages>
> Use of uninitialized value in string eq at
> /usr/share/fai/setup-storage//Commands.pm line 1142.
> Cannot satisfy pre-depends for true:
> vgchange_a_n_VG_vg_system,pv_sigs_removed_vg_system,self_cleared_backup,self_cleared_home,self_cleared_opt,self_cleared_root,self_cleared_usr,self_cleared_var
> -- system left untouched.
> Error in task partition.  Traceback: task_error task_partition task
> task_install task task_action task main
> $LOGUSER is undefined. Not saving log files to remote.
> FATAL ERROR. Installation stopped.
> </fatal error messages>
>
> For the first and third time, as I have said, it installed successfully
> (except the $LOGUSER undefined part) but didn't boot.

The $LOGUSER is not necessary, it is only used to copy the installation
log to another machine, which we do not use.

The problem with LVM is known [1], I usually use fdisk /dev/sda and
then 'o' and 'w' to create a new empty partition table. After that
things should work.

The problem seems to be the GRUB installation.  Did you have a look at
the log after installation?  You can find all the stuff in /tmp/fai/
(After installation and before you reboot, switch to another virtual
console with Ctrl-Alt-F2 and take a look at /tmp/fai/error.log ,
/tmp/fai/shell.log etc. ).  Check if the script GRUB_PC/10-setup
failed and find out why ...

I tested the system mostly on older hardware (no UEFI or GPT) and it
worked fine there (as well as in a VM (12G disk image)).  Do you run
very recent hardware?

Many thanks for your feedback. Hopefully we can find the reason for
grub failing to install and fix it.

Best regards,

     Andi





[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN/Setup_A#Known_Issues_and_Work-Arounds