Re: using initrd preseed.cfg during netboot

[Steve Feehan <sfeehan@sbb.uvm.edu>]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 09:47:00AM -0500, Steve Feehan wrote:

> Yesterday afternoon I decided to proceed down the path of building
> a custom debian installer netboot image with the file-preseed and/or
> initrd-preseed udebs.
> 
> The first problem I encountered is that the initrd-preseed udeb seems
> to not exist for the version of preseed used in stable. The other 
> preseed udebs for stable are version "1.01" but initrd-preseed only 
> exists as version "1.14.1".
> 
> So my questions...
> 
>   1. Am I proceeding in the right direction? Ie. is creating a custom
>      debian-installer netboot image the correct solution to storing a
>      preseed.cfg inside the initrd?
> 
>   2. Do I need to use/build the debian-installer version from sid since
>      there does not appear to be an initrd-preseed for stable?
> 
>   3. Is it possible to use the sid installer to install a stable system?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -- 
> Steve Feehan

OK, here is my temporary work around (I'm still open to guidance
on the correct way to handle this).

  1. checkout debian-installer from svn.
  2. mount the initrd on a loopback device.
  3. copy packages/preseed/debian-installer-startup.d/S35initrd-preseed
     to /mnt/lib/debian-installer-startup.d/S35initrd-preseed
  4. Unmount and compress initrd image.

And now my final (hopefully minor) problem: a couple of the preseed
lines don't seem to be used. For instance, I don't want sshd to start so
I add:

  ssh ssh/run_sshd	string	false

at the end of /preseed.cfg, but it doesn't seem to be honored. Are
preseeds that are not strictly part of the installer not used?

And there are two prompts I can't seem to get rid of, I think the 
debconf keys for one is keymap/policy. The other is just a "note" 
before the keymap/policy question.

Thanks.

-- 
Steve Feehan