Debian's initrd.gz for debian-installer does not download ata-modules or sata-modules udebs, rendering the initrd useless on systems with AHCI controllers - more specifically, it will boot, but detect no disks.

Many systems lack a legacy IDE mode and therefore this is a serious problem.

I can attach other logfiles later, but the jist of it is that it doesn't even attempt to fetch the udebs.

Presumably it has failed to detect the network controller, so it can't
download anything.

Please can you specify what network controller(s) this sytem has?  The
command 'lspci -vnn' should provide the model name and numeric ID for
all PCI devices; look for 'Network controller' or 'Ethernet controller'.

Ben.

That would normally result in a prompt to pick a network controller
driver I think? In any case nic issues is an avenue worth exploring.

Ian.

No. That is not the problem. It has network. There is simply no
ata-modules or sata-modules references anywhere in the initrd. It never
downloads them because it doesn't know to get them.

Control: tag -1 unreproducible

Funny, it works for everyone else.

Ben.

1) If it's so funny, then how come I'm not laughing? Please don't be a snob.

2) http://dmytro.github.io/2012/06/21/debian_cobbler.html - the bug has
been there. It's only in the netboot installer. It doesn't include the
correct udebs, period, nor does it download them. Even grep -r of the
entire initrd reveals it doesn't know where to get them.

Sorry, I meant funny-strange not funny-ha-ha.

I just tested it in KVM/QEMU.  It does download ata-modules.

Are you using the current (7.4) netboot images?  If I remember rightly,
old netboot images may stop working after a point release if you don't
keep the corresponding udebs on a local mirror.

Ben.

On Wed, 26 Feb 2014 01:09:38 +0000 Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> wrote:
 > I just tested it in KVM/QEMU.  It does download ata-modules.
 >
 > Are you using the current (7.4) netboot images?  If I remember rightly,
 > old netboot images may stop working after a point release if you don't
 > keep the corresponding udebs on a local mirror.

I'm able to reproduce this problem on a variety of servers configured to
use AHCI SATA controllers with the Debian 7.7 network install.  I've not
dug into the exact cause of the problem but I can see that there is no
AHCI module loaded by the network installer, "modprobe ahci" returns
that such a module is not known, and dmesg gives no hint of the disks
being discovered or probed.  As a result no hard disks are detected and
the install can't proceed.  lspci does show the SATA controller as present.

If I instead use a DVD image to boot the installer then everything is fine.

I'm not sure what I can usefully do or provide to help debug this but
happy to assist if I can.

Kieran
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As I recall, network installations of other Linux distributions at
Solarflare use an ISO image hosted on the local network and don't
require Internet access, and the test systems are strictly firewalled.

Is the test system allowed to make HTTP connections to the configured
Debian mirror?  Did you set the HTTP proxy correctly?

Ben.

I've got a shell on the test system at the point that it is stuck in the
install process (unable to find disks) and it can make HTTP connections
to arbitrary hosts on the internet.  As far as I can tell the installer
was able to access the Debian mirror and certainly didn't produce any
errors about an inability to connect and access packages.

Kieran
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I would like to mention that I've just hit this bug.

I've got a handful of dell laptops here that will install perfectly via
DVD, but the netboot image fails to load the drivers for the sata
controller.

I've confirmed that the network is functional, and watched a tcpdump of
the installer downloading the installer components from three different
mirrors.

The netboot images are completely missing a handful of drivers according
to this link:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26524888/debian-missing-firmware-with-pxe-installation

And it appears that the drivers are not being downloaded from the mirror
for some reason.

Greg Bell <Greg.Bell@Artemech.com> (2015-02-12):

Great, please attach /var/log/syslog from both a DVD-based install and
from a netboot-based install. Please mention the netboot files you're
serving as well (even if the relevant information should be in syslog
already, that wouldn't hurt).

Mraw,
KiBi.

I'm not sure what is going on, but I can't get it to fail again.

I made ZERO changes to the PXE configuration or preseed files between
my previous message and starting work on this tonight, but for some
reason it's working again.

I've been working on this for the last 4 hours and all of the units
that would not detect hard drives via have been reliably detecting and
installing without any issue. (tested with and without preseed files,
with and without the CD, and with several different mirrors.)

The only thing that I can think of is that the PXE server somehow
cached the kernel and initrd.gz files and was still using the old
files during my testing yesterday, and that cache expired at some
point in the interim.

(For the record, we updated from the 04/24/2014 netboot build to
01-05-2015/current as part of our diagnostics yesterday morning.)

I'm going to try and roll those files back after these are all
installed and issued, and test to see if the issue comes back. (just
to confirm that it was an outdated kernel that caused the problem.)

Greg

Greg Bell <greg.bell@artemech.com> (2015-02-13):

The kernel vs. udeb version mismatch is very likely to be the issue here
indeed.

Mraw,
KiBi.

Me too.

My netboot install (wheezy) failed with 'no disk detected'.  The
netboot initrd does not have the sata drivers.

  Debian version:  7 (wheezy)
  Installer build: 20130613+deb7u2+b4

After adding them (from the kernel's initrd) the install succeeded.

Regards,
Douglas.

Hi,

Douglas Guptill <dguptill@accesswave.ca> (2015-07-13):

Check /var/log/syslog (vt4), you should see them being downloaded on the
fly. If that's the case, it's likely to be a version mismatch which
makes them unusable. Feel free to attach the syslog file to get more
eyes on it.

Mraw,
KiBi.

I believe you are correct; here are some entries from a later
successful install; in which I reverted to the original netboot initrd
file:

  Jul 14 05:54:58 main-menu[424]: INFO: Menu item 'choose-mirror' selected
  Jul 14 05:54:58 anna-install: Queueing udeb apt-mirror-setup for later installation
  Jul 14 05:55:00 anna[4168]: DEBUG: retrieving disk-detect 1.92
  Jul 14 05:55:00 anna[4168]: DEBUG: retrieving ata-modules-3.2.0-4-amd64-di 3.2.65-1
  Jul 14 05:55:01 anna[4168]: DEBUG: retrieving sata-modules-3.2.0-4-amd64-di 3.2.65-1

I suspect my initial problem occurred when the mirror entries in the
preseed file were faulty.  In that case, there would have been no
mirror to retrieve from.  (The machine is on an internal network.)

Sorry for the noise.

Regards,
Douglas

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