Boot method: CD
Image version: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2020-10-12/debian-10.0.0-alpha-NETINST-1.iso
Date: 2021-03-26 to 2021-03-27

Machine: qemu-system-alpha on a buster host
Partitions: <df -Tl will do; the raw partition table is preferred>

root@alpha:~# fdisk -l                                                          |
Disk /dev/sda: 40 GiB, 42949672960 bytes, 83886080 sectors                      |
Disk model: QEMU HARDDISK                                                       |
Geometry: 255 heads, 2 sectors/track, 164482 cylinders                          |
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes                                           |
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes                           |
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes                               |
Disklabel type: bsd                                                             |
                                                                                |
Slice    Start      End  Sectors   Size Type     Fsize Bsize Cpg                |
a            1     1954     1954   977K ext2         0     0   0                |
b         1955   353517   351563 171.7M ext2         0     0   0                |
c       353518 81884768 81531251  38.9G ext2         0     0   0                |
d     81884769 83886078  2001310 977.2M swap         0     0   0                |
root@alpha:~# df -Tl                                                            |
Filesystem     Type     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on             |
udev           devtmpfs   2052568       0   2052568   0% /dev
tmpfs          tmpfs       413304     472    412832   1% /run
/dev/sda3      ext4      39860300 1123656  36682092   3% /
tmpfs          tmpfs      2066512       0   2066512   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs          tmpfs         5120       0      5120   0% /run/lock
/dev/sda2      ext2        170219   68778     92653  43% /boot
tmpfs          tmpfs       413296       0    413296   0% /run/user/0


Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Initial boot:           [O]
Detect network card:    [O]
Configure network:      [O]
Detect media:           [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Clock/timezone setup:   [O]
User/password setup:    [O]
Detect hard drives:     [O]
Partition hard drives:  [O]
Install base system:    [E]
Install tasks:          [O]
Install boot loader:    [?]
Overall install:        [↓]

Comments/Problems:

- https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/debian-installer/2021-01-03/alpha/debian-installer-images_20201202+nmu1_alpha.tar.gz
  is insufficient, it lacks the ISO which contains nic-modules
- Tried https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2021-02-01/debian-10.0.0-alpha-NETINST-1.iso
  first but it contains errors, e.g. no /var/lib/dpkg/status,
  thus used a random older image; turned out to work
- Ran into #985954 so used raw qemu instead of libvirt/virt-manager
- qemu-system-alpha’s SRM firmware ("BIOS") seems to be unable to do
  more than set up the bus and echo back REPL commands instead of executing
  them, so only direct kernel boot is usable, so I copied out the kernel and
  initrd from the ISO and ran:

  qemu-system-alpha -cpu ev68-alpha-cpu -m 2048 -drive format=raw,file=/dev/vg-evolvis-wirt/alpha -drive format=raw,file=debian-10.0.0-alpha-NETINST-1.iso -nographic -net nic -net user -kernel vmlinux-alpha -initrd initrd-alpha.gz -append console=ttyS0

  Installation using the serial console, including screen, worked fine.
- After install, booting from the HDD failed (see above), so I used
  partprobe (kpartx, normally the tool of choice, failed to recognise
  the BSD disklabel used by SRM and thus Linux/Alpha) to map the boot
  partition onto the host and copied kernel and initrd out and boot with:

  qemu-system-alpha -cpu ev68-alpha-cpu -m 4096 -drive format=raw,file=/dev/vg-evolvis-wirt/alpha -nographic -net nic -net user -kernel ~/vmlinux-5.10.0-5-alpha-generic -initrd ~/initrd.img-5.10.0-5-alpha-generic -append 'console=ttyS0 root=UUID=6381e09c-4567-4fff-bbe4-608973308f65'
- After install, getting tons of unaligned messages from dbus:
  [  320.117023] dbus-daemon(366): unaligned trap at 0000020000080bf0: 00000000f6857c0e 28 18
⚠ Unfortunately there was no way to disable usrmerge in d-i,
  so I’m now left with a system I cannot build on and have
  to resort to debootstrapping me a chroot



Please make sure that any installation logs that you think would
be useful are attached to this report. Please compress large
files using gzip.

Hi Thorsten!

The debian-installer tarballs are completely untested. We have ISO images
in the snapshots folder which you should use.

If the nic-modules package is missing, it needs to be added to the pkg-list
for d-i for netboot.

Adrian

John Paul Adrian Glaubitz dixit:

Yeah, I did that later. The tarball there was the first thing I found,
though, and its ISO subdirectory contains only kernel and initrd :/

In contrast to e.g. ppc64el, which ISO to use is hard to figure out.

(As I wrote, the latest ISO didn’t work, I had to use an older one.)

No, this was the ISO subdirectory, not netboot, I use -net nic -net user
and so don’t have netboot set up. This is a throwaway VM for a oneshot.

bye,
//mirabilos

I'm basically maintaining this as a one-man army while the release architectures
have lots of people taking care of the development and testing.

In any case, you used the wrong image.

Adrian