Info below.
Thanks for the report.
-connie
On Tue, 11 May 1999, Dane Skow wrote:
>
> I tried to install the latest test release yesterday and failed.
> I believe the root cause is a bad ethernet board, but I've not
> confirmed that yet. Anyway the error path was quite odd and
> perhaps this fault mode is checkable/should be checked.
>
> I have a 3Com EtherLink III 10base2 NIC (3C509B). The first indication
> of trouble was that the install screen said no NIC responded to the
> probes. This has not been terribly unusual in the past so I continued
> manually. I then entered the IP info (address, netmask, gateway)
> and the next screen indicated that the DNS lookup to get name had
If you get to the DNS lookup failed message then it normally does not
matter what is done next because the real problem is the network is not
working and answering those new questions normally does not help.
>
failed. Setting this by hand resulted in the next step failing
> the mount with an obscure error ("invalid parameter ?") and a second
> error popup saying it could not mount the partition from the server.
> I have a second Linux box and home and so was able to check that
> I could indeed mount /export/linux/52test/i386 from linux.fnal.gov
> and that all the networking info was correct.
>
This card is normally not probeable since it is on the isa bus. On the
test system in my office I have to always select it from the list. It
has the same ethernet card in it.
> Retrying at the mount screen resulted in the machine giving error 11,
> performing various shutdowns, and then saying it was okay to reboot.
>
> Since I already had linux on the machine, I brought it up and was
> able to determine that the network interface was not working in that
> mode either (hence my theory as to the root cause). However, it seems
> like there should be some base check of the interface at the DNS
> step or a better error method. I should think that inoperable NICs
> would be a fairly common fault (either with bad hardware, cabling,
> or botched configs).
>
> The other curious point was that I saw no option for whether one
> wanted to do an upgrade or fresh install. I presume this means that
> the default is to upgrade if something already exists, but we probably
> need help pages on how to perform a fresh install on a machine with
> a preexisting Linux.
>
This depends on what floppy install image you used. I have been making
new floppy install images almost weekly. The version that did not ask
about install vs upgrade is really old.
We will get you a new floppy.
-connie