[elbe-devel] initvm ERROR: Bad archive mirror

[Ralf Schlatterbeck]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 09:16:22PM +0200, Manuel Traut wrote:
> > Checking the Debian archive mirror  ... 25%... 50%... 75%... 100%
> > Choose a mirror of the Debian archive
> > -------------------------------------
> > 
> > !! ERROR: Bad archive mirror
[...]

> btw. we saw this also with httpredir as installation mirror for the initvm.
> 
>   Manuel
> 

Thanks Manut, I've now further debugged this: I've enabled vnc for the
VM and a monitor connection for the vm (to be able to switch virtual
terminals).

My additional command-line params of the VM are now:
-k de -monitor telnet:localhost:4444,server,nowait
-vnc localhost:1

and I've turned off serial console and the textmode stuff of the debian
installer.

(I've done this by killing the first instance of the qemu and then
editing Makefile, removing everything in .stamps and starting things
again with "make")

I can switch VTs by telnetting to localhost:4444 and entering
sendkey ctrl-alt-f2
etc.

Turns out the 'Release' files of the mirror symlinks (stable, oldstable,
...) cannot be retrieved (messages on 4th VT). When I switch to second
VT and manually wget it works. When I then manually select the same
mirror again, installation works. So it seems there's a race condition
between network and install or some other problem with networking.

Although the log on console 4 indicates that the dhcp lease was obtained
before the installer tries to retrieve the Release files it doesn't seem
to work.

Note that I tried to restart the install in the text-console before (by
manually selecting the same mirror again) but this did *not* work. So
I'm currently not sure what made the networking on the VM work.

Any ideas what this could be? 

Of course I do now have a workaround for getting the initial VM to start
but there seems to be a problem that is unrelated to the selected mirror
(I do have the same reproduceable problem for a debian mirror in my
local network, so I'm quite sure this is not a networking problem when
trying to retrieve the mirror files).

Ralf
-- 
Dr. Ralf Schlatterbeck                  Tel:   +43/2243/26465-16
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