package: debian-installer
version: all

I have confirmed this behaviour on both standard Lenny ISOs and Squeeze
daily build ISOs. Steps to reproduce:

1. Download a Lenny or Squeeze ISO (businesscard is fastest, but same occurs
with netinst or full CD images)

2. In Win32, mount the ISO in a virtual drive (e.g. DaemonTools et al.) - if
autostart is enabled the Win32 install-helper pops up, offering to start the
install for you. Follow the prompts to set it up, and the final prompt to
reboot.

3. On reboot, the installer kernel loads but then aborts very quickly
because it cannot find the ISO in the "drive" it expects it to be in.

Steps to work around:

4. Reboot into Windows, download the hd-media installer and unpack it
somewhere.

5. Edit C:\grub.cfg to point to the kernel and initrd you just unpacked,
ignoring the win32-installer's ones in C:\debian

6. Reboot once more and the installer starts up quite happily, and finds the
ISO image on your C drive so you can continue.


Would it be possible to configure the Win32 installer to use the same
behaviour as the hd-media installer? i.e. to look for an ISO in *all* media
- optical drives, hard drives, USB sticks etc. To save time searching you
could even ask the user where to look ...

Cheers,

CC

reassign 542840 debian-installer
thanks

The win32 installer doesn't implement this behaviour.  It merely setups
the system to boot the D-I that came with the CD.

If the D-I that came with the CD is a CD installer, it will behave like a
CD installer.  If it's an hd-media installer, it'll behave like an hd-media
installer, etc.

If it's useful to D-I, it could preseed a debconf parameter to let D-I know
it's being run by win32-loader, but what you want can't be done by win32-loader
itself.

Thanks for the explanation. It just seems to me that one downloads an
ISO, and we should no longer assume than an ISO is only used as a
physical CD. So the installer should not assume that it is running from
a physical CD, and should include hd-media's behaviour.

Just my 2p.

CC

I tend to agree, but this decision is implemented by D-I.  As win32-loader
maintainer there's little I can do about it (so no need to CC me in further
replies).

HTH