Bug#433568: VLANs during install are important

[Ferenc Wagner <wferi@niif.hu>]

Robert LeBlanc <robert@leblancnet.us> writes:

> I too have been bitten by this. For as flexible as the Debian Installer is
> and everything you can do, it's pretty disappointing that it can't do VLANs.
> A lot of enterprises use VLANs, and it seems it would be important to have
> VLAN support to install Debian. It's no fun to reconfigure the network just
> to install/reinstall.

I hacked VLAN support into the Sarge installer once upon a time.  It
wasn't a big deal, like adding the vconfig binary and extending netcfg
here and there a little bit.  The problem is that you can't just
download it like the other optional components, so it would waste memory
in the vast majority of installations.  Which wouldn't be a problem but
in the more memory constrained situations...  I can't judge this.

It would be less of a problem if d-i used the Busybox ip applet *and* if
that supported VLANs.  Until then, I'd work around this by adding the
vconfig binary to the installer medium or loading it as "additional
firmware".  :)
-- 
Regards,
Feri.