[vox-tech] Conversion

[Matt Holland]

On Thursday, May 22, 2003, at 03:02 PM, Mike Simons wrote:
>> I followed the instructions in section 3.7 of the
>> Woody installation manual (Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a
>> Unix/Linux System).
>
>   I'll have to look over those instructions to comment.  Maybe next
> week.

Thanks.  As it turns out, I seem to have solved the problem, but 
there's still the open issue of why the chroot doesn't behave the way 
that it seems it should (more below).

>> all of the appropriate images that I see in "apt-cache search
>> kernel-image" seem to use initrd...
>
>   Hrmmm... I don't see what you mean.  The kernel-images depending on a
> package called initrd-tools, but those are only needed if you plan to
> build an initrd image that works with the kernel-images provided.
>   I maintain the standard Debian boot process does not use initrd
> images.
> ... if you could explain what you are seeing I'll be happy to
> investigate.

I installed the package kernel-image-2.4.18-k6.  The first sign that 
something was wrong was that apt-get complained that it couldn't 
completely install the package because mkinitrd failed.  I would find 
it surprising if apt-get would upset about that if the kernel didn't 
require an initrd image to boot.  I also read some threads in various 
newsgroups, and they all supported the idea that these kernels require 
an initrd image to boot.  I haven't found any evidence to the contrary.

>> I've thought of compiling my own
>> kernel without initrd, but "make menuconfig" doesn't work in the
> chroot
>> (some complaint about missing ncurses, even though libncurses is
>> installed and other curses interfaces [e.g., setting up apt] work
>> fine), and I'm too impatient to survive an old-fashioned "make
> config".
>
>   apt-get install libncurses5-dev
>
>   the libncurses is the runtime part, -dev is what you need to compile
> stuff like the kernel.

Thanks for the tip.  I compiled a kernel without initrd, and 
successfully booted with it.  I was then able to make an initrd image 
for the stock kernel, and now it boots properly.  So it seems like 
something was definitely wrong in the chroot environment.  One thing 
that's interesting is that now /etc/mtab contains an entry for hdb1, 
but if I try to run mkinitrd in the chroot, it still fails.  I'm still 
curious as to why this didn't work quite as documented, except that 
maybe the 2.2 kernels don't require initrd (I don't even know if that 
feature was in 2.2).  I'll have to follow this up by trying again on 
another system.

So now I seem to have a working Debian system, so I just need to learn 
to do things the Debian way.

Matt

--
Matt Holland
Population Biology Graduate Group
University of California
Davis, CA 95616