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Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive.

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  Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive. "Rick Thomas" <rick.thomas@pobox.com> - 2021-01-28 05:30 +0100
    Re: Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive. Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> - 2021-01-28 08:30 +0100
      Re: Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive. "Rick Thomas" <rick.thomas@pobox.com> - 2021-01-28 09:30 +0100
        Re: Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive. "Rick Thomas" <rick.thomas@pobox.com> - 2021-01-29 03:40 +0100
          Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive...  "No kernel modules found" Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> - 2021-01-29 10:10 +0100
            Daily netinst still fail with "No kernel modules found" Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> - 2021-01-29 23:40 +0100
              Re: Daily netinst still fail with "No kernel modules found" Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> - 2021-01-30 00:30 +0100
                Re: Daily netinst still fail with "No kernel modules found" Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> - 2021-01-31 02:40 +0100
            Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No ethernet detected "Rick Thomas" <rbthomas@pobox.com> - 2021-01-30 04:20 +0100
              Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No  ethernet detected Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> - 2021-01-30 04:50 +0100
              Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No ethernet detected "Rick Thomas" <rick.thomas@pobox.com> - 2021-02-07 02:10 +0100
                Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No  ethernet detected Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> - 2021-02-07 02:50 +0100

#65173 — Installing Debian Buster on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive.

I'm trying to install Debian Buster [1] on my Cubox-i4P with an eSATA drive. Everything seems to be fine, but when it comes time to reboot, it boots into the installer again, rather than the installed system.

Here's what I did, and what I observed:

*) I downloaded the two parts of the SDcard install image from [1] and followed the instructions in the README to create a 4GB (I didn't have anything smaller) SDcard installer.
*) I connected the eSATA disk and plugged the SDcard into the Cubox and powered it up.
*) It booted off the SD-card into the installer as expected.
*) Everything went as expected, until it got to the partition-disks phase.
*) I chose to use the eSATA disk as the installation target.  I told it to use the whole disk and use the LVM method of partitioning.
*) It created the /boot ext2 partition in /dev/sda1 and put root, /home and swap in the LVM on /dev/sda5.  This is (I think) exactly what I wanted.
*) There was no mention of the SDcard /dev/mmcblk1 (except when initially choosing the target disk -- I did explicitly NOT choose it at this time)
*) I allowed it to wipe and re-partition the eSATA disk, which it did without incident.
*) Everything proceeded as expected.  I chose a minimal (ssh and base packages) in tasksel.
*) When it came to "make it bootable" I said go ahead.  There was no mention of /dev/mmcblk1 at this stage.
*) It proceeded from there without any apparent errors.
*) When it came time to reboot, I said go ahead.
*) But when the reboot happened, I found myself back in the installer.
*) I tried removing the SDcard and rebooting, but it failed to boot -- after power-on nothing happened.

What I hoped would happen with the eSATA drive was that the installer would write the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) to the SDcard, and configure it to get /boot, root, /home, swap off the eSATA.

What I suspect has happened is that the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) was written to the eSATA drive and so it can't be found by the power-up routine without some reconfiguration to tell it to look at the eSATA, but that isn't happening.

Anybody know what I can do to either:
1) Tell the power-up routines to look at the eSATA?
   or
2) Write the boot firmware to the SD card and configure it to get the rest of the system from the eSATA?

Debug logs were saved, and can be provided upon request.

Thanks in advance for any help!
Rick

PS:   In a previous attempt, I used a 64GB SDcard without the eSATA disk -- putting everything onto the SDcard.  That worked fine (It put the boot stuff on the SDcard) but it's horribly slow due to the very low speed of data transfer to and from the SDcard.

[1] http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/

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#65174

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On 2021-01-27, Rick Thomas wrote:
> I'm trying to install Debian Buster [1] on my Cubox-i4P with an eSATA
> drive. Everything seems to be fine, but when it comes time to reboot,
> it boots into the installer again, rather than the installed system.
>
> Here's what I did, and what I observed:
>
> *) I downloaded the two parts of the SDcard install image from [1] and followed the instructions in the README to create a 4GB (I didn't have anything smaller) SDcard installer.
> *) I connected the eSATA disk and plugged the SDcard into the Cubox and powered it up.
> *) It booted off the SD-card into the installer as expected.
...
> *) But when the reboot happened, I found myself back in the installer.
> *) I tried removing the SDcard and rebooting, but it failed to boot -- after power-on nothing happened.

> What I hoped would happen with the eSATA drive was that the installer
> would write the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) to the SDcard, and
> configure it to get /boot, root, /home, swap off the eSATA.

U-boot can only be loaded from microSD on that platform, as far as I'm
aware.

You can use the bootloader from the installer image, just delete the
boot.scr and/or extlinux.conf from the partition on the installer image,
or make another partition on the microSD card, and mark it bootable, but
don't put anything on it. Then u-boot should fall back to loading the
kernel+initrd+device-tree off of the eSATA.

If you interrupt the boot process and get to a u-boot prompt, you should
be able to see the order of devices u-boot tries to boot from with:

  printenv boot_targets


Now that bullseye is in the early phases of freeze, please consider
testing bullseye, too, if you can! :)


live well,
  vagrant

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#65175

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021, at 11:15 PM, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> On 2021-01-27, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > I'm trying to install Debian Buster [1] on my Cubox-i4P with an eSATA
> > drive. Everything seems to be fine, but when it comes time to reboot,
> > it boots into the installer again, rather than the installed system.
> >
> > Here's what I did, and what I observed:
> >
> > *) I downloaded the two parts of the SDcard install image from [1] and followed the instructions in the README to create a 4GB (I didn't have anything smaller) SDcard installer.
> > *) I connected the eSATA disk and plugged the SDcard into the Cubox and powered it up.
> > *) It booted off the SD-card into the installer as expected.
> ...
> > *) But when the reboot happened, I found myself back in the installer.
> > *) I tried removing the SDcard and rebooting, but it failed to boot -- after power-on nothing happened.
> 
> > What I hoped would happen with the eSATA drive was that the installer
> > would write the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) to the SDcard, and
> > configure it to get /boot, root, /home, swap off the eSATA.
> 
> U-boot can only be loaded from microSD on that platform, as far as I'm
> aware.
> 
> You can use the bootloader from the installer image, just delete the
> boot.scr and/or extlinux.conf from the partition on the installer image,
> or make another partition on the microSD card, and mark it bootable, but
> don't put anything on it. Then u-boot should fall back to loading the
> kernel+initrd+device-tree off of the eSATA.
> 
> If you interrupt the boot process and get to a u-boot prompt, you should
> be able to see the order of devices u-boot tries to boot from with:
> 
>   printenv boot_targets
> 
> 
> Now that bullseye is in the early phases of freeze, please consider
> testing bullseye, too, if you can! :)

Thanks!  This sounds like it ought to work.  I'll give it a try.

For bullseye, where should I download the latest installer image from?  I'd love to give it a try as well!
Rick

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#65180

On Thu, Jan 28, 2021, at 12:08 AM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2021, at 11:15 PM, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> > On 2021-01-27, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > > I'm trying to install Debian Buster [1] on my Cubox-i4P with an eSATA
> > > drive. Everything seems to be fine, but when it comes time to reboot,
> > > it boots into the installer again, rather than the installed system.
> > >
> > > Here's what I did, and what I observed:
> > >
> > > *) I downloaded the two parts of the SDcard install image from [1] and followed the instructions in the README to create a 4GB (I didn't have anything smaller) SDcard installer.
> > > *) I connected the eSATA disk and plugged the SDcard into the Cubox and powered it up.
> > > *) It booted off the SD-card into the installer as expected.
> > ...
> > > *) But when the reboot happened, I found myself back in the installer.
> > > *) I tried removing the SDcard and rebooting, but it failed to boot -- after power-on nothing happened.
> > 
> > > What I hoped would happen with the eSATA drive was that the installer
> > > would write the boot firmware (u-boot, etc) to the SDcard, and
> > > configure it to get /boot, root, /home, swap off the eSATA.
> > 
> > U-boot can only be loaded from microSD on that platform, as far as I'm
> > aware.
> > 
> > You can use the bootloader from the installer image, just delete the
> > boot.scr and/or extlinux.conf from the partition on the installer image,
> > or make another partition on the microSD card, and mark it bootable, but
> > don't put anything on it. Then u-boot should fall back to loading the
> > kernel+initrd+device-tree off of the eSATA.
> > 
> > If you interrupt the boot process and get to a u-boot prompt, you should
> > be able to see the order of devices u-boot tries to boot from with:
> > 
> >   printenv boot_targets
> > 
> > 
> > Now that bullseye is in the early phases of freeze, please consider
> > testing bullseye, too, if you can! :)
> 
> Thanks!  This sounds like it ought to work.  I'll give it a try.
> 
> For bullseye, where should I download the latest installer image from?  
> I'd love to give it a try as well!
> Rick

That worked!

Specifically, what I did was:
*) on a different machine, I mounted the installer SDcard first partition
*) renamed boot.scr to oboot.scr
*) sync and umount the SDcard.
*) inserted it in the Cubox
*) powered up and watched it boot from the eSATA disk.

Whoopie!

Observations:
*)     => printenv boot_targets
       boot_targets=mmc0 sata0 usb0 pxe dhcp

*) It located the /boot partition on the eSATA drive without any help from me.  I assume that means it goes down the list of boot_targets one by one looking for an active bootable partition containing a file called "boot.scr" which it then executes to perform the remainder of the boot process (mostly to load the kernel and initrd , then pass control to them).

*) I wonder if it would be possible to change the "boot_targets" environment variable to put "sata0" first?  Would that work, if it could be done?  If that were done, would it mess up booting from the SDcard when there was no eSATA drive?

So now, the next question is: how do we convince the debian installer to recognize that it's installing to the eSATA drive and either set "boot_targets" appropriately, or mark the boot partition on the SDcard as not bootable.

I've added "debian-boot" to the CC list of this email.  Should I file a bug report?  If so, what package should I file it against?

Next thing to test -- can I install bullseye the same way?

Thanks very much to everyone for all your help!
Rick

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#65181 — Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... "No kernel modules found"

Hi,

"Rick Thomas" <rick.thomas@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2021, at 6:21 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> 
> > Next thing to test -- can I install bullseye the same way?
> 
> So I tried installing bullseye from [1] which, incidentally is dated Dec 2, 2020.  Isn't this kinda old for a "current" Bullseye?

That's from the latest alpha release.

> It booted and the installer started, but when it got to "Download installer components" I got a red error screen.  I've attached a screenshot.
> 
> I'm guessing that "kinda old" is the problem.  The kernel on [1] is out of date with respect to the kernel(s) available on deb.debian.org ?
> 
> Where should I look for one that's more up-to-date?

On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
you should look under the daily snapshots.
For armhf that would be
https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/


Holger

-- 
Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org>
PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508  3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076

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#65189 — Daily netinst still fail with "No kernel modules found"

Hi,

Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> wrote:
> 
> "Rick Thomas" <rick.thomas@pobox.com> wrote:
> > Where should I look for one that's more up-to-date?
> 
> On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> you should look under the daily snapshots.
> For armhf that would be
> https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/

Hmm, that's curious!

When trying images from today, the netboot ones are working, but the
netinst images are still failing with "no kernel modules found" error.

Interestingly, the netboot image has an linux kernel v5.10.0-2 running
on it (that's ok), but on the netinst image I have a v5.9.0-4 !!!

Some research with old netinst images show these kernel versions:
	20201115	5.9.0-2
	20201130	5.9.0-4
	20201203	5.9.0-4		that's alpha3 release
	20210115	5.9.0-4
	20210129	5.9.0-4
	 
So, there is something wrong with some of the dailys (netinst, maybe more...)
Do we still get the alpha3 builds copied to daily, or something like that?

Steve in CC



Holger



-- 
Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org>
PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508  3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076

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#65191 — Re: Daily netinst still fail with "No kernel modules found"

Hey Holger!

On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 11:30:21PM +0100, Holger Wansing wrote:
>Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> wrote:
>> 
>> "Rick Thomas" <rick.thomas@pobox.com> wrote:
>> > Where should I look for one that's more up-to-date?
>> 
>> On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
>> you should look under the daily snapshots.
>> For armhf that would be
>> https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
>
>Hmm, that's curious!
>
>When trying images from today, the netboot ones are working, but the
>netinst images are still failing with "no kernel modules found" error.
>
>Interestingly, the netboot image has an linux kernel v5.10.0-2 running
>on it (that's ok), but on the netinst image I have a v5.9.0-4 !!!
>
>Some research with old netinst images show these kernel versions:
>	20201115	5.9.0-2
>	20201130	5.9.0-4
>	20201203	5.9.0-4		that's alpha3 release
>	20210115	5.9.0-4
>	20210129	5.9.0-4
>	 
>So, there is something wrong with some of the dailys (netinst, maybe more...)
>Do we still get the alpha3 builds copied to daily, or something like that?

I think I've found the bug. I've been refactoring CD image builds and
it looks like I missed a configuration setting. We were not picking up
on the daily d-i builds, instead using the stuff from the archive. :-(

I'm just about to trigger a daily build by hand now with the fix, and
that should hopefully solve the problem.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
There's no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, A state of bliss

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#65205 — Re: Daily netinst still fail with "No kernel modules found"

On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 11:20:12PM +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 11:30:21PM +0100, Holger Wansing wrote:
>>	 
>>So, there is something wrong with some of the dailys (netinst, maybe more...)
>>Do we still get the alpha3 builds copied to daily, or something like that?
>
>I think I've found the bug. I've been refactoring CD image builds and
>it looks like I missed a configuration setting. We were not picking up
>on the daily d-i builds, instead using the stuff from the archive. :-(
>
>I'm just about to trigger a daily build by hand now with the fix, and
>that should hopefully solve the problem.

Just to confirm - this has fixed the problem AFAICS. I've just tested
with the current daily amd64 netinst and all looks good here.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
Who needs computer imagery when you've got Brian Blessed?

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#65194 — Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No ethernet detected

Hi!

On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 1:03 AM, Holger Wansing wrote:
> On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> you should look under the daily snapshots.
> For armhf that would be
> https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/

I downloaded the two-part image from [1] dated 2021-01-30 and tried to install it on my Cubox-i4.

It booted fine but when it got to the "Detect network hardware" phase, it failed and said:

    No Ethernet card was detected. If you know the name of the driver 
    needed by your Ethernet card, you can select it from the list. 
    Driver needed by your Ethernet card:  
and gave a long list of available ethernet drivers.

I couldn't find anything that looked like an Atheros 8035 driver, which seems to be the one in use when I boot with a working system.

Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Rick

[1] https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
     dated 2021-01-30

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#65195 — Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No ethernet detected

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On 2021-01-29, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Hi!
>
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 1:03 AM, Holger Wansing wrote:
>> On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
>> you should look under the daily snapshots.
>> For armhf that would be
>> https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
>
> I downloaded the two-part image from [1] dated 2021-01-30 and tried to install it on my Cubox-i4.
>
> It booted fine but when it got to the "Detect network hardware" phase, it failed and said:
>
>     No Ethernet card was detected. If you know the name of the driver 
>     needed by your Ethernet card, you can select it from the list. 
>     Driver needed by your Ethernet card:  
> and gave a long list of available ethernet drivers.

I'm having a similar issue on a hummingboard-i2ex (which is kind of like
a single-board-computer variant of the Cubox-i) on an already installed
system running linux 5.10.x, while 5.9.x works fine on that system, so
seems to be a regression in the kernel.


> I couldn't find anything that looked like an Atheros 8035 driver, which seems to be the one in use when I boot with a working system.

Pretty sure it is not atheros, but handled by:

  drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/fec_main.c

Not sure what exact module or built-in that ends up in.


live well,
  vagrant

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#65272 — Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No ethernet detected

On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 7:18 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 1:03 AM, Holger Wansing wrote:
> > On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> > you should look under the daily snapshots.
> > For armhf that would be
> > https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
> 
> I downloaded the two-part image from [1] dated 2021-01-30 and tried to 
> install it on my Cubox-i4.
> 
> It booted fine but when it got to the "Detect network hardware" phase, 
> it failed and said:
> 
>     No Ethernet card was detected. If you know the name of the driver 
>     needed by your Ethernet card, you can select it from the list. 
>     Driver needed by your Ethernet card:  
> and gave a long list of available ethernet drivers.
> 
> I couldn't find anything that looked like an Atheros 8035 driver, which 
> seems to be the one in use when I boot with a working system.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> Thanks!
> Rick
> 
> [1] https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
>      dated 2021-01-30

I tried it again, this time with the components dated 2021-02-06 (today).
I was hoping that the problem was transient and might have been fixed in the intervening week, but I still got the same result: "No Ethernet card was detected."

Do I need to file a bug report?  If so, to which package?  If I do, is there any chance it will be fixed before Bullseye is released into the wild?
Is there a known workaround that I can apply?

Thanks for any help!
Rick

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#65273 — Re: Installing Debian Bullseye on Cubox-i4 with eSATA drive... No ethernet detected

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On 2021-02-06, Rick Thomas wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 7:18 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> Hi!
>> 
>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2021, at 1:03 AM, Holger Wansing wrote:
>> > On https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
>> > you should look under the daily snapshots.
>> > For armhf that would be
>> > https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
>> 
>> I downloaded the two-part image from [1] dated 2021-01-30 and tried to 
>> install it on my Cubox-i4.
>> 
>> It booted fine but when it got to the "Detect network hardware" phase, 
>> it failed and said:
>> 
>>     No Ethernet card was detected. If you know the name of the driver 
>>     needed by your Ethernet card, you can select it from the list. 
>>     Driver needed by your Ethernet card:  
>> and gave a long list of available ethernet drivers.
>> 
>> I couldn't find anything that looked like an Atheros 8035 driver, which 
>> seems to be the one in use when I boot with a working system.
>> 
>> Any suggestions?
>> Thanks!
>> Rick
>> 
>> [1] https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
>>      dated 2021-01-30
>
> I tried it again, this time with the components dated 2021-02-06 (today).
> I was hoping that the problem was transient and might have been fixed in the intervening week, but I still got the same result: "No Ethernet card was detected."
>
> Do I need to file a bug report?  If so, to which package?  If I do, is there any chance it will be fixed before Bullseye is released into the wild?
> Is there a known workaround that I can apply?

Pretty sure it is a kernel bug, since I can make it go away on a similar
system by downgrading to linux 5.9.x. Please CC me on the report and
I'll try to contribute what I can!


live well,
  vagrant

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