Fails to read floppy image correctly

[Frans Pop]

Installing Debian from floppy images will often fail. The first ("boot") floppy (kernel and minimal initramfs initrd) gets loaded correctly and will prompt for the second ("root") floppy (additional initramfs). The loading of the second floppy will fail, apparently depending on its contents.

It looks as if the size or padding of the initramfs initrd that gets read confuses VirtualBox and results in not all data or too much data being passed to the guest. Note that the loading of a particular root floppy will either always fail or always succeed; it is when minor changes are made to the contents of the floppy (a new build of the installer) that things change.

If qemu is used, the second floppy will consistently load correctly in all cases, which is what indicates an issue in Virtualbox.

An example set of images (with the load failure) is available here: ​http://people.debian.org/~fjp/tmp/d-i/floppy/VB_fault/

The boot floppy should be loaded by typing 'install' or 'expert'. If the second floppy loads successfully, the initial dialog of the Debian Installer will be displayed.

I'm using the Debian package of VirtualBox (ose), version 1.6.2 on a dual-core x64_64 host system running Debian unstable.

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.