Debian-Installer errata

Errata for squeeze release alpha 1

This is a list of known problems in the squeeze alpha 1 release of Debian Installer. If you do not see your problem listed here, please send us an installation report describing the problem.

Auto-assembly of RAID arrays in rescue mode can corrupt data
Rescue mode should be used with great care when software RAID arrays were in use on the system to rescue. The rescue mode scripts automatically assemble arrays, which could lead to data corruption in the presence of invalid or obsolete RAID superblocks.
Buggy routers may cause network problems
If you experience network problems during the installation, this may be caused by a router somewhere between you and the Debian mirror that doesn't correctly handle window scaling. See #401435 and this kerneltrap article for details.
You can work around this issue by disabling TCP window scaling. Activate a shell and enter the following command:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling
For the installed system you should probably not completely disable TCP window scaling. The following command will set ranges for reading and writing that should work with almost any router:
echo 4096 65536 65536 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem
echo 4096 65536 65536 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_wmem
Country names not properly sorted in English
During mirror selection the list of country name is sorted by country codes instead of country names, which can make it difficult to find some countries on the list. This only affects installations in English.
Some USB keyboards may not work
Some USB keyboards require specific kernel modules for proper support. Those are missing in current installer. See #561036, #567431. Fixed in daily built images.
i386: few issues
The i386 port has some known issues in this release:
  • Due to an increase in the size of the kernel, we are unable to provide installation images for installs from floppy disk.
Partitions overs 16TiB not supported by ext4
The ext4 file system creation tools do not support creating file systems over 16TiB in size.
armel: root on RAID boot issue
Please be aware that there is a problem if you choose to have root on RAID that will cause your machine not to start after installing Debian. Fortunately, there's a easy workaround: when the installer tells you that it's done and asks you whether you want to reboot, choose "Go back" and open a shell in the menu. Then use nano to edit the file /target/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/flash_kernel_set_root and remove the check that ensures the root device exists. Type exit, choose "Make the system bootable" and press okay at the "Installation complete" message.
s390: unsupported features
  • support for the DASD DIAG discipline is currently not available
sparc: silo bootloader installation problem
The silo bootloader is not correctly installed to the target system. Because of this the reboot will fail. See #565639 for details. Fixed in daily built images.
kFreeBSD images not available
The support for kFreeBSD is still being integrated into the installer and is not available in this release. Work is being done to fix it in the upcoming releases.