14. Installation Debugging Guide

If you have encountered a problem during installation, follow this guide to collect all the necessary information and report the issue to the development team.

Note

This guide applies to VectorLinux Versions 7.1 and newer only.

14.1. Collecting the logs

The installation logs will help determine what went wrong during the install process. Here is how to collect the logs.

You will need to save this data to an alternate location where you can find it later, or paste to a an online pastebin for later retreival. In this guide we will assume that you have a partition /dev/sdb1 formatted and ready to accept data.

14.1.1. From the GUI installer

If you installed using our GUI installer and your installation has stalled or has exited with an error:

  • Access the application menu by moving the mouse pointer to the bottom left corner of the screen. Once the taskbar and menu become visible, click Menu -> Terminal. This will open a terminal window
  • Mount your partition where the logs will be saved.
    • mkdir /mnt/sdb1
    • mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
  • Copy the log files to the destination partition
    • cp /root/installer.log /mnt/sdb1/installer.log
    • cp /root/subprocess.log /mnt/sdb1/subprocess.log

14.1.2. From the Text installer

If you installed using our Text installer and your installation has stalled or failed with an error, here is how you can retreive the logs.

  • Access a new TTY by pressing CTRL+ALT+F3. F4 can be used just the same.
  • Log in as user root. When it asks for password, just press Enter
  • When the installer shows up again, press the ``< Back > `` button.
  • Mount your partition where the logs will be saved
    • mkdir /mnt/sdb1
    • mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
  • Copy the log files to the destination partition.
    • cp /root/installer.log /mnt/sdb1/installer.log
    • cp /root/subprocess.log /mnt/sdb1/subprocess.log

14.2. Filing a the bug report

If your installation has failed, we ask that you file a bug report at http://bitbucket.org/VLCore/ in the correct project (ie, vl71, vl72) that corresponds to the version you have installed. In your bug report you should include the log files you retreived from the installation.

Note

If your machine has a network connection during installation (test by pinging google.com for example), you can paste your logs to an online pastebin right from the terminal or shell. For example, to paste to sprunge.us, you can cat /root/installer.log | curl -F 'sprunge=<-' http://sprunge.us.

If you use one of these services, make sure you paste the contents on the bug report itself, and not just a link. Most of these services will remove the content of your paste after a few days.