[lug] Help installing debian at the install fest?

[D. Stimits]

...

>>
>> However, if I take the same debian distro and try to install it on my 
>> ext2
>> partition, I get a core dump. I tried several different debian 
>> distros and
>> they all core dumped (except sarge). I even used my digital camera to 
>> take a
>> picture of my monitor (with the core dump on it, of course) and post 
>> it in
>> the debian forums. No one was able to help me (that was six months ago).
>

Just thought I'd throw a URL out there that speaks of the JMicron SATA 
controller fiasco. The gist of it all is that until very recently 
kernels have not had much ability to boot new SATA controllers without 
the backwards compatible PATA mode. While kernels have caught on, 
installers do not generally get updated the moment there is a new kernel 
out there, and so even if the current kernel supports the non-PATA mode, 
the boot kernel of the installer probably does not (although it just 
might now that there are some new distro versions out since the kernels 
support the non-PATA mode have come out). During the early stages, the 
BIOS deals with the controller, but at some point the kernel takes over, 
and if the mode can't be dealt with, it dies a nasty death. The general 
cure is to go into the BIOS and tell the BIOS to keep the SATA 
controller in legacy PATA mode. This gets difficult with some of the 
boards which use JMicron chipsets, as there is no such legacy mode 
available. Catch-22. Should this be the case, early boot and some boot 
setups will work fine, even part way into the install, but die as soon 
as the filesystem must be read through this controller from the kernel 
without BIOS support. If you are able to install by other means that do 
not need the controller, then upgrade the kernel to a version that 
supports the controller, then you would be just fine. I did this with 
one machine via a network install, updated the kernel, and then it could 
boot just fine.

This might or might not be your problem, but it sounded as if the 
install got a ways in, then suddenly died, perhaps at a stage that 
required the kernel to read the hard drive. Other things could be wrong 
too, e.g., decompressing files is particularly sensitive to bad ram, or 
some old sytems might still have problems with large drives and reading 
a boot partition too far out...or even something as simple as not having 
the required module (don't know if it is still out there, but there was 
once a bug where RAID partitions and LVM were loaded in the wrong order 
relative to SCSI drivers, such that it could not detect RAID partitions 
or LVM if the controller were SCSI, unless you forcibly add SCSI in the 
kernel itself).

Here's a URL to the JMicron issue:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net