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<sect1 id="boot-troubleshooting">
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<title>Troubleshooting the Installation Process</title>
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<sect2 condition="supports-floppy-boot" id="unreliable-floppies">
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<title>Floppy Disk Reliability</title>
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The biggest problem for people using floppy disks to install Debian
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seems to be floppy disk reliability.
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The boot floppy is the floppy with the worst problems, because it
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is read by the hardware directly, before Linux boots. Often, the
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hardware doesn't read as reliably as the Linux floppy disk driver, and
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may just stop without printing an error message if it reads incorrect
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data. There can also be failures in the Driver Floppies most of which
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indicate themselves with a flood of messages about disk I/O errors.
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If you are having the installation stall at a particular floppy, the
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first thing you should do is re-download the floppy disk image and
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write it to a <emphasis>different</emphasis> floppy. Simply
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floppy may not be sufficient, even if it appears that the floppy was
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reformatted and written with no errors. It is sometimes useful to try
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writing the floppy on a different system.
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One user reports he had to write the images to floppy
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<emphasis>three</emphasis> times before one worked, and then
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everything was fine with the third floppy.
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Other users have reported that simply rebooting a few times with the
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same floppy in the floppy drive can lead to a successful boot. This is
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all due to buggy hardware or firmware floppy drivers.
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<sect2><title>Boot Configuration</title>
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If you have problems and the kernel hangs during the boot process,
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doesn't recognize peripherals you actually have, or drives are not
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recognized properly, the first thing to check is the boot parameters,
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as discussed in <xref linkend="boot-parms"/>.
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If you are booting with your own kernel instead of the one supplied
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with the installer, be sure that <userinput>CONFIG_DEVFS</userinput> is set in
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your kernel. The installer requires
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<userinput>CONFIG_DEVFS</userinput>.
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Often, problems can be solved by removing add-ons and peripherals, and
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then trying booting again. <phrase arch="i386">Internal modems, sound
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cards, and Plug-n-Play devices can be especially problematic.</phrase>
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If you have a large amount of memory installed in your machine, more
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than 512M, and the installer hangs when booting the kernel, you may
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need to include a boot argument to limit the amount of memory the
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kernel sees, such as <userinput>mem=512m</userinput>.
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<sect2 arch="i386" id="i386-boot-problems">
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<title>Common &arch-title; Installation Problems</title>
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There are some common installation problems that can be solved or avoided by
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passing certain boot parameters to the installer.
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Some systems have floppies with <quote>inverted DCLs</quote>. If you receive
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errors reading from the floppy, even when you know the floppy is good,
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try the parameter <userinput>floppy=thinkpad</userinput>.
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On some systems, such as the IBM PS/1 or ValuePoint (which have ST-506
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disk drivers), the IDE drive may not be properly recognized. Again,
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try it first without the parameters and see if the IDE drive is
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recognized properly. If not, determine your drive geometry
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(cylinders, heads, and sectors), and use the parameter
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<userinput>hd=<replaceable>cylinders</replaceable>,<replaceable>heads</replaceable>,<replaceable>sectors</replaceable></userinput>.
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If you have a very old machine, and the kernel hangs after saying
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<computeroutput>Checking 'hlt' instruction...</computeroutput>, then
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you should try the <userinput>no-hlt</userinput> boot argument, which
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If your screen begins to show a weird picture while the kernel boots,
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eg. pure white, pure black or colored pixel garbage, your system may
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contain a problematic video card which does not switch to the
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framebuffer mode properly. Then you can use the boot parameter
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<userinput>debian-installer/framebuffer=false</userinput> or
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<userinput>video=vga16:off</userinput> to disable the framebuffer
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console. Only the English
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language will be available during the installation due to limited
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console features. See <xref linkend="boot-parms"/> for details.
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<title>System Freeze During the PCMCIA Configuration Phase</title>
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Some laptop models produced by Dell are known to crash when PCMCIA device
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detection tries to access some hardware addresses. Other laptops may display
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similar problems. If you experience such a problem and you don't need PCMCIA
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support during the installation, you can disable PCMCIA using the
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<userinput>hw-detect/start_pcmcia=false</userinput> boot parameter. You can
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then configure PCMCIA after the installation is completed and exclude the
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resource range causing the problems.
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Alternatively, you can boot the installer in expert mode. You will
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then be asked to enter the resource range options your hardware
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needs. For example, if you have one of the Dell laptops mentioned
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above, you should enter <userinput>exclude port
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0x800-0x8ff</userinput> here. There is also a list of some common
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resource range options in the <ulink
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url="http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/doc/PCMCIA-HOWTO-1.html#ss1.12">System
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resource settings section of the PCMCIA HOWTO</ulink>. Note that you
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have to omit the commas, if any, when you enter this value in the
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<title>System Freeze while Loading the USB Modules</title>
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The kernel normally tries to install USB modules and the USB keyboard driver
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in order to support some non-standard USB keyboards. However, there are some
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broken USB systems where the driver hangs on loading. A possible workaround
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may be disabling the USB controller in your mainboard BIOS setup. Another option
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is passing the <userinput>debian-installer/probe/usb=false</userinput> parameter
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at the boot prompt, which will prevent the modules from being loaded.
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<sect2 id="kernel-msgs">
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<title>Interpreting the Kernel Startup Messages</title>
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During the boot sequence, you may see many messages in the form
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<computeroutput>can't find <replaceable>something</replaceable>
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</computeroutput>, or <computeroutput>
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<replaceable>something</replaceable> not present</computeroutput>,
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<computeroutput>can't initialize <replaceable>something</replaceable>
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</computeroutput>, or even <computeroutput>this driver release depends
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on <replaceable>something</replaceable> </computeroutput>.
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Most of these messages are harmless. You
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see them because the kernel for the installation system is built to
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run on computers with many different peripheral devices. Obviously, no
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one computer will have every possible peripheral device, so the
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operating system may emit a few complaints while it looks for
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peripherals you don't own. You may also see the system pause for a
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while. This happens when it is waiting for a device to respond, and
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that device is not present on your system. If you find the time it
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takes to boot the system unacceptably long, you can create a
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custom kernel later (see <xref linkend="kernel-baking"/>).
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<sect2 id="problem-report">
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<title>Bug Reporter</title>
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If you get through the initial boot phase but cannot complete the
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install, the bug reporter menu choice may be helpful. It copies system
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error logs and configuration information to a user-supplied floppy.
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This information may provide clues as to what went wrong and how to
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fix it. If you are submitting a bug report you may want to attach
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this information to the bug report.
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Other pertinent installation messages may be found in
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<filename>/var/log/</filename> during the
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installation, and <filename>/var/log/debian-installer/</filename>
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after the computer has been booted into the installed system.
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<sect2 id="submit-bug">
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<title>Submitting Installation Reports</title>
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If you still have problems, please submit an installation report. We also
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encourage installation reports to be sent even if the installation is
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successful, so that we can get as much information as possible on the largest
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number of hardware configurations. Please use this template when filling out
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installation reports, and file the report as a bug report against the
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<classname>installation-reports</classname> pseudo package, by sending it to
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<email>submit@bugs.debian.org</email>.
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<informalexample><screen>
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Package: installation-reports
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Debian-installer-version: <Fill in date and from where you got the image>
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uname -a: <The result of running uname -a on a shell prompt>
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Date: <Date and time of the install>
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Method: <How did you install? What did you boot off? If network
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install, from where? Proxied?>
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Machine: <Description of machine (eg, IBM Thinkpad R32)>
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Root Device: <IDE? SCSI? Name of device?>
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Root Size/partition table: <Feel free to paste the full partition
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table, with notes on which partitions are mounted where.>
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Output of lspci and lspci -n:
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Base System Installation Checklist:
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[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
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Initial boot worked: [ ]
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Configure network HW: [ ]
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Load installer modules: [ ]
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Detect hard drives: [ ]
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Partition hard drives: [ ]
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Create file systems: [ ]
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Mount partitions: [ ]
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Install base system: [ ]
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Install boot loader: [ ]
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<Description of the install, in prose, and any thoughts, comments
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and ideas you had during the initial install.>
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</screen></informalexample>
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In the bug report, describe what the problem is, including the last
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visible kernel messages in the event of a kernel hang. Describe the
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steps that you did which brought the system into the problem state.