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preseed/late_command Question



Hello,

We use a local forked copy of the Debian unstable branch as the
foundation for our client desktops and every year or so I sync back up
to the current unstable branch and reload our desktop boxes/laptops. I'm
looking at doing another client roll-out in a couple of weeks and am now
in the process of re-syncing our client installation to the current
unstable branch and Debian installer.

Last time (pre-sarge release), I used the base-config/late_command to
add a local custom package repository, install various stock and custom
packages, and then perform a long series of system tweaks for our client
desktop load.

I see that the current (daily build version) installer is doing
everything in one stage now (no post-reboot second stage) so I've
modified the base-config/late_command to preseed/late_command. I've
tried changing it to go into the target directory and do a chroot to run
the late_command.sh script:

d-i  preseed/late_command string  cd /target ; chroot . ; \
wget -q -O - http://intranet/client-install/late_command.sh | \
/bin/bash

This no longer works as I expected it. The install stops with 'Running
preseed...' and the process listing shows everything just stopped and
waiting. I think this is because some of the packages still require some
occasional input (which I will be tweaking/preseeding out of the install
process this weekend).

When I run the late_command by hand in the second console window it will
run longer and ask me the question or two that hangs it up, but I get
tons of errors from the various packages postinst scripts failing.
Largely this is because /proc isn't mounted in the chroot jail and the
services that fail to start after installation (like portmap, nis, etc).

Can anyone give me some pointers on a better approach to take? Does the
installer support adding multiple apt sources (for example, a local
package repository + the stock Debian unstable repository) so I can
build a tasksel meta-package instead of hacking the package installation
into the late_command? Is anyone else doing something like this?

Thanks in advance!

Tony



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