Bug#100349: dbootstrap should dynamically determine which dists are available

[David Whedon <dwhedon@debian.org>]

Package: boot-floppies
Version: N/A; reported 2001-06-09
Severity: wishlist
Tags: woody


When dbootstrap gets to the "Install the Base System" stage i thas a static
lists of distrubutions that it tells you to choose from.  However, in many
cases (CD install) they will not all be available.  Currently if
bootargs.isquiet we default to installing stable, but that is still a bit
clumbsy.  Here is a script form Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> that
dynamically determs dists over the network, something similar oculd be uesd on
a CD, maybe.  I don't really know what the cleanest solution is at the moment.



You can probably determine this automatically nowadays. If you've got
wget and a http mirror, something like:

------
#!/bin/sh

SUITES="stable testing unstable"
MIRROR="http://ftp.debian.org/debian";

rm -f release
for s in $SUITES; do
        wget -O release $MIRROR/dists/$s/Release >/dev/null 2>&1
        if [ ! -s release ]; then continue; fi

        codename=`cat release | sed -n 's/^Codename: //p'`
        status=`cat release | sed -n 's/^Suite: //p'`
        desc=`cat release | sed -n 's/^Description: //p'`
        rm -f release

        echo $s $codename $status $desc
done
------

will tell you:

] stable potato stable Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r2
] testing woody testing Debian Testing distribution - Not Released
] unstable sid unstable Debian Unstable - Not Released

which gives you what path on the ftp site (dists/$1) will get you which
distribution of Debian ($2 = codename, $3 = status), and will give you
a little description too.

Cheers,
aj

-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux meow 2.4.4 #1 Thu May 31 11:41:44 PDT 2001 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C