Still not installing on my laptop, odd discovery about missing links...

[Neil Woolford]

At 01:02 20/12/04, Neil Woolford wrote:
>The process anna (the package loader) repeatedly gives the error message:
>/cdrom/dists/stable/Release : Not a directory.
>
>What is interesting about this is that /dists/stable on the CD (final 
>published Ubuntu
>'official' disk) is actually a link to /dists/warty/

>However, when I list /cdrom/dists/stable with the -l option it is *not a 
>link*.  Hence the
>error message from anna which can't find Release as the path to it 
>includes a normal
>filename not the link to the directory.

>It therefore appears that for some reason during install the filesystem is 
>not recognising
>symbolic links on the CD, although they do appear elsewhere in the install 
>system's files.
>What could be causing the CD to mount in such a way?  How can I stop it 
>happening?

Well, now I know.  (Thanks to a day off work with a bad back and all my 
paperwork at the
office so I didn't feel guilty about not doing it at home.)

The clue was found by running install on my desktop machine and checking it 
stage by
stage, comparing against the laptop.

The desktop machine indicated that Joliet *and* Rock Ridge extensions to 
the iso9660 (CD)
filesystem were active.  On the laptop only Joliet was there.  Rock Ridge 
takes care of many
of the more sophisticated parts of the Linux filesystem, including symbolic 
links.  If I mounted
the CD on the desktop machine with Rock Ridge disabled, then the files 
which should have
been links to the .../warty/ directory were just plain files, exactly the 
problem I was having
on the laptop.

I'll spare you the details of the various false trails I followed after this...

The villain of the piece is the piix module which is loaded with many other 
modules to do with
handling CD (and other removable media) drives.  This module activates 
ultra 33 udma facilities
(/proc/piix4) on the laptop which, (even though the system has disabled dma 
because it fails),
messes up the Rock Ridge extension in some way.

Removing the piix module in the menu list (expert mode) allows the disc to 
be mounted correctly
with the symbolic links active, after which everything works.

Neil 
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