• problem with DVD installation

    From Gianmarco@21:1/5 to All on Tue May 3 14:20:01 2022
    hello.

    good day to you and thank you to read my email.

    i downloaded the whole debian dvd set to install on an amd64 pc. up to
    debian jessie the installing procedure by DVD always been perfectly
    successful.

    in the case of debian 11.2 no computer, not even the most recent one, can
    start with the installation directly from the 1st DVD. obviously the bios
    has been set to boot from DVD, in all cases and devices that I have tried.

    I ask the favor of giving me some directives, because I notice that the
    usual installation procedure from DVD seems to no longer work with any PC
    (not even recent), no burner. I also checked the burning procedure but this
    is always successful.

    there is probably something new that completely escapes me: could you help
    me please?

    thank you in advance.

    Gianmarco

    <div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(
    0,0,0)">hello.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">good day to you and thank you to read my email.</div><div
    class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#000000" face="arial, sans-serif">i downloaded the whole debian dvd set to install on an amd64 pc. up to debian jessie the
    installing procedure by DVD always been perfectly successful.</font><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default">in the case of debian 11.2 no computer, not even the most recent one, can start with the installation directly
    from the 1st DVD. obviously the bios has been set to boot from DVD, in all cases and devices that I have tried.<br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><div class="gmail_default">I ask the favor of giving me some
    directives, because I notice that the usual installation procedure from <span style="line-height:1.5">DVD seems to no longer work with any PC (not even recent), no burner. I also checked the burning procedure but this is always successful.</span></div><
    div class="gmail_default"><span style="line-height:1.5"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default">there is probably something new that completely escapes me: could you help me please?<br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_
    default">thank you in advance.</div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default">Gianmarco</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>

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  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to All on Tue May 3 16:00:01 2022
    Hi,

    in the case of debian 11.2 no computer, not even the most recent one, can start with the installation directly from the 1st DVD.

    Well, at least for me with a halfways modern EFI it boots to some Debian software.

    - What kind of firmware did you try ? What mainboards or laptop models ?
    - Is always the same DVD drive used for the installation attempt ?
    (E.g. because is it attached via USB.)
    - How far does the DVD boot for you ? Do you see indications that GRUB
    or ISOLINUX (in case of legacy BIOS) was started ?

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What i tested:

    I downloaded

    https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/11.2.0/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-11.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso

    verified its SHA256
    022370f066bc91b2cdac3837ff5fa9f3822c5afb2fc34f68084416079fe5a408
    and burnt it onto a DVD+RW

    xorriso -as cdrecord dev=/dev/sr5 -v -eject fs=32m debian-11.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso

    Then i put the ISO into a Xeon machine with an ASUS board of 2020.
    The EFI firmware offers me in its boot menu the model name of the DVD drive
    for booting. I double click (it's that kind of EFI with icons and animated
    CPU fans) and quite immediately see the word "GRUB" on the screen.
    Then a GRUB menu appears which offers me to install. I rather choose
    Advanced Options and Rescue Mode. All seems well until i want to go
    back to choose another country.
    It begins to talk about "Installation" which i don't want. So i press
    the hardware Reset button and rather check whether my Debian on that
    machine is still operational. It is. Still with fvwm. What a relief.


    Have a nice dyay :)

    Thomas

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  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to Gianmarco on Tue May 3 17:40:02 2022
    Hi,

    Gianmarco wrote:
    maybe you are telling me that i have to use grub to start the DVD ?

    No. GRUB is the bootloader in the ISO which gets started by EFI if it
    is not in legacy emulation mode and thus would start the ISOLINUX bootloader which is in the ISO too.


    - I set the bios with the boot from DVD.

    I assume that the newer machine has EFI as firmware.
    So it offers the DVD to you in its boot menue ?

    In my ASUS machine's EFI i then double click the item and GRUB gets started
    by the EFI firmware.


    - the system went straight into the pre-installed OS boot.

    It shouldn't do this.
    If it offers the DVD as boot opportunity then it should start one of the bootloader images which are mentioned in the El Torito catalog of the ISO.

    If the firmware believes to be a legacy BIOS (or emulates it) then it
    should start the ISOLINUX boot program.
    If it believes to be native EFI, then it should look into the boot image
    for EFI, which is actually a FAT filesystem. In that filesystem it will
    find /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI which it then will run.
    Both boot loaders will then present their boot menus which bring you
    to the first Linux kernel and the installation software.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Are you sure older ISOs boot better on your machines ?
    You mentioned Jessie.
    So does the following small (251 MiB) ISO here work better ?

    https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/8.11.1/amd64/iso-cd/debian-8.11.1-amd64-netinst.iso

    You can put it on DVD, although it's a CD sized ISO.


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to Gianmarco on Tue May 3 19:10:01 2022
    Hi,

    i wrote:
    What ISO exactly did you use ?

    Gianmarco wrote:
    i downloaded ISO files from here (i have tried both format): https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/source/iso-dvd/

    That's 11.3.0 meanwhile. But as you report to have used 11.2, i assume that
    it is the same ISO as i downloaded from the archives and tested a few hours ago.


    I used brasero, for example.
    I selected: burn ISO image.

    That's the correct choice.

    If you still have the 11.2 DVD:
    What do you get from

    dd if=/dev/sr0 bs=2048 count=1903144 | sha256sum

    I get

    022370f066bc91b2cdac3837ff5fa9f3822c5afb2fc34f68084416079fe5a408 -

    as with debian-11.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso from which i got the count of
    1903144 blocks (dividing 3897638912 bytes by block size 2048).


    So it did not actively offer you the DVD but rather you told it to prefer DVD over hard disk ?

    yes: what you wrote is right.

    All in all this looks like the DVD drive does not tell the BIOS that a
    medium is loaded or that the BIOS does not recognize the El Torito boot
    record and the boot catalog on the medium.
    (But exactly this stuff has not changed between Debian 8 and 11.)

    Insofar it would be very interesting to see what above dd | sha256sum
    yields.


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to Gianmarco on Tue May 3 18:40:01 2022
    Hi,

    i wrote:
    So does the following small (251 MiB) ISO here work better ?
     https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/8.11.1/amd64/iso-cd/debian-8.11.1-amd64-netinst.iso

    Gianmarco wrote:
    i have already installed the jessie version of linux some years ago in one
    of the pc where im try now to install 11.2.
    [...]
    but some days ago i tried to install debian jessie newly in the same pc and the installation was very good.

    What ISO exactly did you use ?

    By what program did you put it on the DVD ?
    Please describe either command line options or the GUI menu actions which
    you selected.


    the bios here is very simple.

    So it did not actively offer you the DVD but rather you told it to prefer
    DVD over hard disk ?

    Since you say it's old BIOS, does this BIOS-only ISO boot:

    https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-mac-11.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso

    (The name "mac" is misleading and refers to a family of Apple computers
    which boot by BIOS but refuse if the EFI equipment is advertised.)


    The reason for my questions is to find out what works and what does not.
    There were some changes between Debian 8 and 11. But the boot lures, which
    lead the firmware to the boot images, have not changed.
    So your report is quite a riddle, given that nobody else seems to have experienced a similar refusal of multiple machines.


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to Gianmarco on Wed May 4 11:00:01 2022
    Hi,

    Gianmarco wrote:
    I have tried with: 10.3, 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3.
    [...]
    my results (with DVD-1 debian version 11.2):
    1903144+0 record in
    1903144+0 record out
    3897638912 byte (3,9 GB) copied, 260,578 s, 15,0 MB/s d1fc0ddc81d980b9eddc9d110344bcf17a6cbd5750e147112ccc23bef4d61a8a  -

    The DVD is readable at least as far it is needed for the BIOS to find
    the EL Torito boot record, the catalog, and the boot images.
    But the SHA256 does not match the one of
    https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/11.2.0/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-11.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso

    Checking the DVD-1 of 10.3, 11.1, 11.3 would need other count= arguments
    for dd. They would have to be derived from their image sizes or from
    inspecting the DVDs.
    See below.


    I just wanted to tell you that with a 2021-machine, of a friend of mine,
    we tried to download the ISO file (DVD-1) from this 2021-machine, always
    burn it in his 2021-machine (windows-OS) and we always tried to launch the installation from the same machine. the result was for me unexpectedly the same as all the other tests I performed.

    I still believe that the DVDs are somehow bad.

    Please inspect those which you still have by:

    xorriso -indev /dev/sr0 -toc -report_el_torito plain

    and report the resulting information lines.

    With the DVD+RW to which i burnt debian-11.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso i get:

    xorriso : NOTE : Loading ISO image tree from LBA 0
    xorriso : UPDATE : 80 nodes read in 1 seconds
    ...
    xorriso : UPDATE : 9791 nodes read in 8 seconds
    xorriso : NOTE : Detected El-Torito boot information which currently is set to be discarded
    Drive current: -indev '/dev/sr0'
    Media current: DVD+RW
    Media status : is written , is appendable
    Boot record : El Torito , MBR isohybrid cyl-align-on GPT APM
    Media summary: 1 session, 1903144 data blocks, 3717m data, 766m free
    Volume id : 'Debian 11.2.0 amd64 1'
    Drive current: -indev '/dev/sr0'
    Drive access : exclusive:unrestricted
    Drive type : vendor 'HL-DT-ST' product 'BDDVDRW GGC-H20L' revision '1.03'
    Drive id : '... nobody needs to know ...'
    Media current: DVD+RW
    Media product: MBIPG101/W04/48 , Moser Baer India Limited
    Media status : is written , is appendable
    Media blocks : 1903168 readable , 391936 writable , 2295104 overall
    Boot record : El Torito , MBR isohybrid cyl-align-on GPT APM
    Boot catalog : '/isolinux/boot.cat'
    Boot image : '/isolinux/isolinux.bin' , boot_info_table=on
    Boot image : '/boot/grub/efi.img' , platform_id=0xEF
    ISO offers : Rock_Ridge Joliet
    ISO loaded : Rock_Ridge
    TOC layout : Idx , sbsector , Size , Volume Id
    ISO session : 1 , 0 , 1903144s , Debian 11.2.0 amd64 1
    Media summary: 1 session, 1903144 data blocks, 3717m data, 766m free
    Media nwa : 1903168s
    El Torito catalog : 5946 1
    El Torito cat path : /isolinux/boot.cat
    El Torito images : N Pltf B Emul Ld_seg Hdpt Ldsiz LBA
    El Torito boot img : 1 BIOS y none 0x0000 0x00 4 7243
    El Torito boot img : 2 UEFI y none 0x0000 0x00 5184 5947
    El Torito img path : 1 /isolinux/isolinux.bin
    El Torito img opts : 1 boot-info-table isohybrid-suitable
    El Torito img path : 2 /boot/grub/efi.img

    The size to be used with dd's count= is given in the lines

    TOC layout : Idx , sbsector , Size , Volume Id
    ISO session : 1 , 0 , 1903144s , Debian 11.2.0 amd64 1
    Media summary: 1 session, 1903144 data blocks, 3717m data, 766m free

    Other ISOs will show different numbers than 1903144.

    Older xorriso versions might omit some of the shown lines. But the
    assessment of node numbers (files and directories), of ISO session size,
    of volume id, and of El Torito boot images is supposed to be the same as
    in my above example.

    You will probably get other info in these lines:

    Media current: DVD+RW
    Media product: MBIPG101/W04/48 , Moser Baer India Limited

    It will be interesting to see what DVD type from which manufacturer you
    used.

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

    Sorry for my lack of more particular ideas about what goes wrong.
    The fact that the other subscribers to this mailing list are not offering
    own ideas might mean that they currently have none.

    To the bystanders:
    A test with an old BIOS machine and a Debian 11.3 DVD-1 would nevertheless
    be helpful. I can currently only test the EFI boot path.

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

    To get you going with Debian 11:

    Would a USB stick of at least 4 GB capacity be available for being completely overwritten ?

    If so, i propose (with the usual warnings not to overwrite your hard disk
    if it happens to be /dev/sdc):

    # Make a backup of the complete USB stick which i assume to be /dev/sdc
    usb_stick_dev=/dev/sdc
    usb_stick_backup="$HOME"/usb_stick_backup.gz
    dd if="$usb_stick_dev" bs=1M | gzip > "$usb_stick_backup"

    # Copy ISO image to the stick (i assume 11.3 here, because it is the
    # version that is currently advised for Debian installations)
    dd if=debian-11.3.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso of="$usb_stick_dev" bs=1M ; sync

    The last step is the risky one.
    Check twice whether /dev/sdc is correct or use a safer method like the
    one described in
    https://wiki.debian.org/XorrisoDdTarget#Identify_the_device_by_plugging_and_copy_if_it_looks_safe_enough

    Try to convince your machines' firmwares to boot from that USB stick.
    The ISOs contain a bootable MBR for BIOS and an EFI system partiton.
    So they should boot from the USB stick and lead to the same installer
    software as does the DVD.

    If you later want to get back your USB stick's old content and partitioning, perform this (again risky) dd run:

    # Restore backup
    usb_stick_dev=/dev/sdc
    usb_stick_backup="$HOME"/usb_stick_backup.gz
    gunzip < "$usb_stick_backup" | dd of="$usb_stick_dev" bs=1M


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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  • From J.A. Bezemer@21:1/5 to Thomas Schmitt on Thu May 5 22:10:01 2022
    On Wed, 4 May 2022, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
    Gianmarco wrote:
    I have tried with: 10.3, 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3.
    [...]

    Sorry for my lack of more particular ideas about what goes wrong.
    The fact that the other subscribers to this mailing list are not offering
    own ideas might mean that they currently have none.

    To the bystanders:
    A test with an old BIOS machine and a Debian 11.3 DVD-1 would nevertheless
    be helpful. I can currently only test the EFI boot path.

    Just tested firmware-11.3.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso on a J1900 system with SATA
    DVD drive. Boots fine into isolinux in BIOS mode, and into grub in EFI
    mode. So that would rule out any big problems with the iso.

    Some more things that you might check:

    - Disable any "Secure boot" or "Verified boot" functionality.

    - An EFI system might not boot into BIOS mode unless some "Compatibility
    mode" ("CSM") has been enabled.

    - There are some 64-bit systems where EFI runs in 32-bit mode. To get
    these booted into 64-bit installer, you need the multi-arch iso from here: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/multi-arch/iso-cd/debian-11.3.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso

    This is a CD-sized iso with minimal installable software. Once the
    installer has started, you can put in an amd64 DVD to install software
    from.

    - Maybe your system tries to be smart and refuses to boot when a DVD
    appears to be a harddisk instead. You could try clearing the first 512
    bytes of the iso file ("partition table") and write a new DVD with that.

    Good luck!

    Best regards,
    Anne Bezemer

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  • From J.A. Bezemer@21:1/5 to Gianmarco on Mon May 9 22:00:02 2022
    Hi Gianmarco,

    On Mon, 9 May 2022, Gianmarco wrote:

    Dear Anne.

    through the CD you listed to me, and the net, i got my debian 11.3. its
    good.

    Excellent, so the multi-arch netinst CD is booting properly into the
    installer. Now you're trying to do a next step.

    but i wanted to try again some way to get my debian directly by the 1st DVD. through USB i got the same problem as the DVD, just the same.
    so i tried inserting the CD and then replacing it with the DVD.......
    and you wrote: "Once the installer has started, you can put in an amd64
    DVD to install software
    from."
    good: something happened, but i got this error:
    error: file '/install.amd/vmlinuz' not found
    error: you need to load th kernel first

    This is expected; indeed you swapped too early.

    so, i tried to continue with the CD again, inserting the DVD after the next step, but during the phase "detecting hardware to find installation media"
    a problem reading data was showed.

    Okay, this should probably have worked, but I might have remembered incorrectly.

    When you leave the CD inserted, and the installer detects and scans it,
    will that work properly? Now right after that, the installer should ask
    you if you have another disc to scan. At that question, you can take out
    the CD, insert the DVD, and *then* choose Yes (if I remember the sequence correctly). This way, the installer will register both the CD and the DVD,
    and can install software from both of them.

    When the CD is scanned properly using this process, but the DVD fails,
    then your DVD is bad. Maybe the DVD has bad data on it (corrupted
    download), or the DVD burner is bad, or the DVD reader is bad. Then it's easiest to just forget about the DVD, and only use the CD, and have the
    rest of software downloaded from the internet by the installer. The
    installer will prompt you for network settings and a software download
    location ("mirror") for that purpose.


    i would like to try clearing the first 512 bytes of the iso file, but i
    dont know the way to do that.

    Now that you can start the installer from CD, you can forget about the
    first 512 bytes. It will not change detection of the DVD by the installer
    in any way.

    Best regards,
    Anne Bezemer

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  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to J.A. Bezemer on Mon May 9 22:30:01 2022
    Hi,

    J.A. Bezemer wrote:
    When the CD is scanned properly using this process, but the DVD fails, then your DVD is bad. Maybe the DVD has bad data on it (corrupted download), or the DVD burner is bad, or the DVD reader is bad.

    I agree in principle. But the particular reason for the firmware's refusal
    to consider booting the DVD should be found out.

    So i would still be interested in seeing the output of

    xorriso -indev /dev/sr0 -toc -report_el_torito plain

    while the DVD is in the drive, and of

    xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -list_profiles

    regardless whether the medium is loaded or not.
    (If there is more than one optical drive, the address might be /dev/sr1 or /dev/sr2.)


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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  • From Andrew M.A. Cater@21:1/5 to Thomas Schmitt on Mon May 9 23:50:01 2022
    On Mon, May 09, 2022 at 10:29:45PM +0200, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
    Hi,

    J.A. Bezemer wrote:
    When the CD is scanned properly using this process, but the DVD fails, then your DVD is bad. Maybe the DVD has bad data on it (corrupted download), or the DVD burner is bad, or the DVD reader is bad.

    I agree in principle. But the particular reason for the firmware's refusal
    to consider booting the DVD should be found out.

    So i would still be interested in seeing the output of

    xorriso -indev /dev/sr0 -toc -report_el_torito plain

    while the DVD is in the drive, and of

    xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -list_profiles

    regardless whether the medium is loaded or not.
    (If there is more than one optical drive, the address might be /dev/sr1 or /dev/sr2.)


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas


    If this is one of the strange machines with 32 bit UEFI firmware and a 64 bit processor - Intel Bay Trail laptop, for example - then the standard installers have problems - as outlined - and you'd need to find the multi-arch DVD to install from.

    If you use the multi-arch netinst to isntall a minimal Debian, you can always then use 64 bit DVDs to add packages with apt-cdrom.

    Hope this helps, all the very best,

    Andy Cater

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