Question about a modification in Debian Installer
Hi,
My name is Oriol Matavacas and am currently a student in the Barcelona
School of Informatics (FIB) at the UPC, majoring in Computer Systems.
I'm currently working in the final degree project.
The subject of my project is "unattended installation of Linux
Distributions". My goal is to create a personalized installation GUI,
to be included in a personalized Debian LiveCD (downloaded from any
Debian official mirror), toghether with a menu that will generate the
“preseed.cfg” and recipe preconfiguration files. Currently, all tests
with “preseed.cfg” configuration are OK: The different option
configurations I've tried are successfully applied. In addition, I
have modified the original ramdisk “initrd.gz” from original Debian
installation CD and rebuilt the iso with “mkiso”; also with
satisfactory results.
The unattended installation done with “hd-media” images from a memory
stick and iso install CD works as well. So far all my objectives have
been achieved, however my remaining challenges are:
To take a generic harddisk and create a formated disk partition which
will contain:
- initrd.gz and vmlinuz files from “hd-media” images.
- “preseed.cfg” personalized file inside initrd.gz ramdisk.
- an original iso installation cd from an official Debian mirror.
- GRUB installed, and configured to load initrd and Vmlinuz from this partition.
The idea have is to install Debian in the same disk I have saved the
installer files (initrd.gz, vmlinuz and iso file); that is, I want to
launch a personalized Debian installation that will install Debian on
the same disk that contains the source installation files.
Obviously this has many problems:
- Save the original data and installation files during installation
and partition step -> Solved with the creation of a “new” partition
with the same size and position of the previous existing partition and
the “method { keep }” option in “recipe” file.
- Change/modify the partitions table of a hard disk with a mounted
partition. Solution 1: Modify the partition table before launching the
Debian installation, and skip the “partman” step (modify partman udeb
or modify anna-install list). Solution 2: Umount the partition and
directories just before the partitioner step (partman step), execute
partman step and, just after that, remount the unmounted partition.
I know in a “regular” installation the installation will be launched
from a liveCD, network or from a memory stick (using hd-media images).
My tests from now have been:
- Installing from a personalized LiveCD (the Debian installation CD)
with all partitions ( including / ) in the personalized "recipe" file
with the “method { keep }” option, which was successful and didn't
cause all data in other partitions to be modified.
- Installing from a personalized “hd-media” on the same disk that I
want to install Debian (my goal). The result is that the Debian
installer gives an error message in the "partman" step. All the
options that I can select cause an error or an infinite loop. The
obvious error in the "syslog" file is “/hd-media busy” or “partman: no
maching physical volumnes grup”. I can umount manually (in console 2,
alt + f2) “/cdrom”, but if I try to umount manually “/hd-media”, the
error message is “umount: Couldn't umount /hd-media: Invalid
argument”. I believe I just can't modify a partition table that has a
partition mounted.
My questions are:
Should I insert my “personalized” scripts/options on the Debian
installer just before or after partman step?
How I can modify anna-install list udeb packages to skip partman step?
Where can I find more technical information about the process or about
modifying a udeb package(or partman udeb package)?
Is it difficult to find people that are knowledgeable with the Debian
installation process. Thank you very much in advance.
If you have any question, please don't hesitate to ask.
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