Debian 9 was just released two days ago. Most of us got excited to download the new version and see what’s new. And also to test the new images and whether a safe upgrade can be done at the moment or not.
However, there seems to be a bug in all the Debian 9 live images. When you try to install it using the graphical installer, an error message appears:
“There was an error reading data from the CD-ROM. Please make sure it is in the drive… Failed to copy from CD-ROM, retry?”
When debugged a little bit, the reason seems to be the following error message which is shown in the log files. The installer can’t find the libzlo2-2-udeb_2.08-1.2+b2_amd64.udeb
package:
cdrom-retriever: error: Unable to find `/w/work/free/gnomepool/main/libl/libzlo2-2-udeb/libzlo2-2-udeb_2.08-1.2+b2_amd64.udeb`
We faced the same bug when we also tried to download Debian 9 GNOME live. Other users on the Debian forums have confirmed the same problem as well for all the other Debian live images. GNOME, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, Cinnamon.. All live images are affected.
Users on the mailing list captured the error message:
Unfortunately, this bug doesn’t seem to be hardware-specific or local only for some users. Debian developers have confirmed the bug and they are already working on a fix for it. A bug report with ID #865015 was created on Debian Tracker in order to track the issue, with severity: Grave.
According to Debian developer Steve McIntyre, the real reason behind the bug is:
The Packages files in the image point to .debs using full path, not relative to the stuff in the image.
He’s also testing a fix. If his fix works well, all the Debian 9 lives images will have to be rebuilt again.
But until then, all Debian 9 Live images graphical installers are broken, you can’t install the system from it. You can, however, boot into the live system and play with it to see new features. There’s also a command-line installer, which I don’t know if it has the same problem or not.
If you are in a hurry to install Debian 9, you should download the Netinstall, DVD or small CD images in order to be able to install the system on your hard drive.
Update, 22 June, 00:07 AM GMT +3: Debian developers have released version 9.0.1 which contains bug fixes for this bug and a lot of other issues. You can check them from: http://get.debian.org/cdimage/release/current-live/
Hanny is a computer science & engineering graduate with a master degree, and an open source software developer. He has created a lot of open source programs over the years, and maintains separate online platforms for promoting open source in his local communities.
Hanny is the founder of FOSS Post.