DVDs Won't Eject During Install

[dpastern]

Soooo...haven't installed Debian in a long while (last full install circa 2008-2009). Not much has changed other than moving to UEFI and getting rid of sys v (neither good moves imho). Anyway...trying to install Debian testing (via the 3 disc ISO images that I downloaded and burned to disc)...get to the point where it's configure the package manager and it asks to scan other installation media...selecting yes and you can't eject the damn DVD and swap it for disk #2, #3 etc...very frustrating and very badly designed. I did some googling and found this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=109858

which sadly, is of no help to me as I do not have the ability to easily connect via an ethernet connection and the usb wireless dongle that I'm using requires installation of proprietary drivers post install). Not everyone doing an install has active access to the Internet during install...

I can't continue as it appears that grub ins't installed and I won't be able to boot the installs (or MS Windows on the other disk). It seems that GRUB is not on disk 1 and if this is the case, it's a serious mistake from the Debian devs.

reading the quoted thread, one user suggests to force the disc to eject with a paperclip, which I am about to try, but it shouldn't have to be this way...

The installer should release the drive and allow it to eject discs once you select "yes" and click continue...it doesn't. Another very bad design.

I haven't tried an alternate terminal and seeing if I can forcibly eject said disk #1 installer...but I shouldn't have to go to that extreme.

if we're trying to make Linux easier for newbies, we're failing. BADLY.

edit: I'll add that clicking yes and continue and waiting X amount of time does result in the disc drive door opening - for like half a second and then immediately being drawn back into the optical drive assembly...no chance of getting the existing disc out and another disc in lol...terrible!

[dpastern]

Update, ejecting the disc drive manually and inserting the #2 disc install media was a partial success - the drive refused tray refused to close and I had to manually push it shut. The installer hung on running cdset, I clicked cancel, back to the previous screen and retried and it worked. Did the same trick for install disc #3 but sadly, the installer has hung at the running cdset page so I can't return to the prior screen and re-try...

edit: forcibly ejecting disc #3 and manually closing the tray eventually got it to work after several attempts...so all 3 discs scanned, it was disc #1 now and back to square 1 lol...

2nd edit: finally got disc #1 back in and recognised and finished the install. Sadly...Debian won't boot:

Init hw failure or mei: initialization failed and EDAC sbridge: Couldn't find mci handler"
and " Init hw failure or mei: initialization f" and no windows entry in GRUB, despite telling it to find other O/S during install...

*sigh*.

Definitely off to try Kubuntu...or linux Mint.

The current Debian installer is GARBAGE.

[sunrat]

Definitely off to try Kubuntu...or linux Mint.

Sorry you weren't able to install Debian.
Computers and code can be complex.
There are nice people here who answer nice questions.

The current Debian installer is GARBAGE.

Noted.

[dpastern]

Thanks for the reply...Kubuntu has faired a bit better - first install failed (boot error). 2nd install worked, but I didn't install the proprietary drivers, so post install, the wifi dongle stopped working...mounted the live DVD and tried to install the debs manually, no luck. Added the live DVD to apt sources, updated, no luck. So...tried installing Kubuntu for a 3rd time, went away and did some stuff during the install process, came back to an error (complaining about dvd rom drive or hard drive having issues).

I find it amusing that a computer in storage for most of the past 8 years and hardly used is having so many issues. I suspect the motherboard is on its way out - just too many problems with both windows and linux (yesterday was windows 7 ultimate upgrade to win 10, what a nightmare)...I have 2 optical drives, 1 of them is not being recognised by either windows or the BIOS (but has power)...the other optical drive refuses to burn at anything faster than 4x (fails with error if you go faster than 4x, works OK at 4x but is mega slow)...

It has been a truly horrid weekend - 8.5 hours yesterday, 9 hours today...and I'm just fed up and had enough. So, really grumpy at the moment it's just been One of those weekends, where if it can go wrong, it has, every.single.time...should have been an hour job each for windows and linux updates...nearly 18 hours, still having issues...

[sunrat]

Sounds like the Kubuntu and Windows installers are garbage too (I can confirm that about the Win10 one).

[dpastern]

Sounds like the Kubuntu and Windows installers are garbage too (I can confirm that about the Win10 one).

hahaha! Kubuntu did a bit better than Debian. Windows did install - but only after the Linux drive's partitions were removed (I had a working linux mint install from 2011/2012). Windows has actually been the best so far, which really surprised me, especially since I hate windows with a passion (my main system is a MacBook Pro mid 2009).

I bought a lenovo 430t a month ago which will be my field laptop for my astrophotography setup (php2, cart de ciels, image acquisition, etc). The PC in question is being resurrected for PixInsight. It won't be great since it's only 4 core, but it'll be better than the MBP or Lenovo and by a considerable amount

If I can't get this PC to work, I'll save money for a Ryzen 7 2700x and suitable motherboard/ram and nvme drive for a tempfs parallel disk setup (PixInsight loves cores and loves parallel disk output and you can get massive speed advantages if you set it up right).

I'm on my 8th attempt with Kubuntu and will call it quits after this and simply wipe the linux drive and use it as a tempfs drive in windows 10 and install pixinsight to windows 10. I wanted to use pixinsight in linux because it's main development platform is Linux (Kubuntu actually) and it gives a slight performance advantage when run in linux vs windows (ignoring hardware specs) as Linux' I/O performance easily beats Windows efforts...

I may go out and buy a network cable and try and set it up that way tomorrow night, depends on how I feel. At the moment, I've had enough (full weekend working on this PC, no R&R downtime) and I'm just stressed AF. I've been using Linux since '97, but I haven't kept on top of new tech such as SSD, nvme, uefi etc. uefi especially just confuses the hell out of me, when I finish the install of Kubuntu, I have a bunch of bootable options in the bios but I have no idea which One I should pick...I've worked in IT for 15 odd years, but left the industry 4 years ago and have lost most of my skills - the Mac setup is so low maintenance and I wasn't using Windows so nothing was reinforced. My memory is starting to go and I'm starting to have massive learning, comprehension and retention issues (about to turn 51 and starting to lose the plot lol). I've always been a quick learner, so the past few years with the learning downturn have been very difficult for me to accept.

So please forgive a cranky old bastard who's had a rough weekend!

[dpastern]

OK, success!

i realised that my 6th and 7th reinstalls were without the damn wireless USB dongle plugged in...duh! I feel like such an idiot. Popped it back in, reinstalled, this time the proprietary drivers installed. Kubuntu booted, and loaded, and the display resolution was correct.

network wasn't still working, but some digging using modinfo and lsusb (kept thinking lspci until it dawned on me lol) and I followed the instructions on this excellent page:

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthrea ... ing-slowly

wasn't able to modprobe rtl8xxxu and couldn't figure out why until it dawned on me to check dmesg and it didn't like the 't" flag, so changed it to '1" for both options, tried modprobe again and voila, it loaded the module and I was able to instantly connect to my local wifi network.

I have never used wifi on Linux before, so this has been a very new experience for me...and my poor rusty brain has had to really work hard. I think I'll take a couple of panadols now...

[trinidad]

trying to install Debian testing (via the 3 disc ISO images that I downloaded and burned to disc

I have never used wifi on Linux before

You need firmware. If you really want help you need to post your hardware info here. Given your obvious "experience" with Linux, Debian testing is a hardly a choice you should make. Non-free stable net-install ISO would be a lot better choice for you. Also grousing about Kubuntu is not a Debian issue here and no one really cares. DVD ejection is a lingering problem with all kinds of Linux installers, but that problem is with your hardware not the installer. If this is an AMD CPU on an ASUS board I'd hazard a guess at this point that that the hardware has some OEM 32bit PCI addresses, and the DVD drive is jumpered to master because the OEM installed Windows with UEFI on the media channel because of incomplete or spurious/broken microcode. You may also have some locked memory. Use the Debian stable non-free net-install ISO and use the Kubuntu forum for Kubuntu questions.

https://manpages.debian.org/jessie/ejec ... .1.en.html

TC

[dpastern]

it's kinda hard to post hardware info when said problematic machine doesn't have Internet access. Yes, I can copy/paste via USB stick, but boy that becomes old and tiresome after a very short while.

Anyway, it's a Gigabyte x79s-u5-wifi motherboard, 2 SSDs and 1 SATA HDD (Samsung 840 120GB for Linux and Samsung 840pro 240GB for windows; 2TB drive for data). 2x Nvidia GTX460 cards in SLI mode (not really needed to be honest). Creative soundcard, can't remember the model. Intel i7 3820 4 core CPU. 56 GB RAM (Corsair vengeance, stock speeds, no overclocking).

I went with testing because I want to use PixInsight, and it requires certain versions of GCC and glibc, which Debian stable does not meet. I'd usually use stable.

I ran Debian as my sole desktop from 2002-2006, so I'm not stupid, but I am very rusty. When I ran Debian in the past, I'd pin testing and sometimes Sid reps.

eject is useless to me, I couldn't get an alternate console during Debian install (weird!).

Already posted on the Kubuntu forums, they appear low traffic and no replies...

I had issues with Debian and UEFI with this system back in 2011/2012 and gave up and went with Linux Mint, which worked OOTB (Ubuntu and Debian refused to work). Given the time span, I expected UEFI to be non-problematic, but it obviously isn't.

Anyway, I (late very last night, worked on machine from 9.30am to 12.30am, 15 hours) got Kubuntu installed, sans network. Much research and I was able to figure out how to activate the wifi network.

Still to fix are forcing the wifi network to autostart at startup (for some reason, I have to manually unplug the wifi USB dongle after every reboot - the system sees it, but modprobing the kernel module doesn't work until AFTER I unplug the damn thing). No Windows in grub either, have tried a few things, but no luck so far. Will try and grab boot-repair tonight if i get the time and see if that helps.