Re: Automated PXE-installations -- problems with timezone and keyboard layout

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 12:54:00PM -0500, Anthony Awtrey wrote:
> On 02/24/05 11:04, Mika S Marjamäki wrote:
> >For some reason the number of kernel parameters (in pxelinux.cfg/default
> >on the TFTP-server) is limited to 8, and for some even more odd reason
> >d-i wants those parameters from kernel. BUT, PXE-stuff etc. eat all the
> >available kernel parameter space and I cannot pass
> >"countrychooser/shortlist=FI console-keymaps-at/keymap=fi" to the kernel
> >which means that keyboard layout and timezone are wrong after
> >installation.
> 
> I had a similar problem and solved it by modifying the installer 
> initrd.gz image. I created a file called S31-custom-config and put my 
> additional debconf defaults in it. Here are mine:
> 
> ### Start S31-custom-config
> # Set other default installer settings...
> debconf-set debian-installer/framebuffer "false"
> debconf-set languagechooser/language-name "English"
> debconf-set countrychooser/shortlist "US"
> debconf-set console-keymaps-at/keymap "us"
> ### End S31-custom-config

You also have initrd-preseed for this kind of thing. Create a
/preseed.cfg file in the initrd that looks like this:

  d-i debian-installer/framebuffer boolean false
  d-i languagechooser/language-name select English
  d-i countrychooser/shortlist select US
  d-i console-keymaps-at/keymap select us

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]