Bug#870030: debian-installer: Packages missing when using NetInstall

[ajhlinuxuser <sharpzq4300@gmail.com>]

Package: debian-installer
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

On July 12th 2017 I installed using debian-9.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso.
The install was done onto a VM using VirtualBox.
As far as I can tell, all went as expected.

Then, on July 27th 2017, I repeated the exact same installation on another
VM.  I thought that the resulting system was the same, but I later found
that the 'mail' command was missing.  This led me to look at installed
packages on both VM's, and I found that 19 packages were missing from
the new VM, even though I did the same steps in the installation.

This is the diff between a plaintext list of packages on the first VM and
the list of packages on the second VM:

50,53d49
< exim4
< exim4-base
< exim4-config
< exim4-daemon-light
68d63
< guile-2.0-libs:amd64
134d128
< libfribidi0:amd64
136d129
< libgc1c2:amd64
146d138
< libgsasl7
167d158
< libkyotocabinet16v5:amd64
174d164
< libltdl7:amd64
178d167
< liblzo2-2:amd64
181,182d169
< libmailutils5:amd64
< libmariadbclient18:amd64
196d182
< libntlm0:amd64
213d198
< libpython2.7:amd64
270,271d254
< mailutils
< mailutils-common
278d260
< mysql-common
299d280
< psmisc


I also installed 3 more VMs that day, to see if the problem was intermittent.
All of the four VMs had the same result.

I used the following selections when doing the installs:

    *Language: English
    *Country: Canada
    *Keyboard: American English
    *Hostname: debian#, where # has been a number from 1-5, Domain: local
    *root password, username and password identical between installs
    *Timezone: eastern
    *Partitioning: Guided-use entire disk, all files in one partition
    *Mirror: ftp.ca.debian.org, blank field for proxy, popcon=no
    *Software Selection: only "SSH Server" and "Std System Utilities"
    *GRUB installed to MBR


I believe that in the span of those 15 days, those packages were removed by
somebody from the list of packages that the NetInstaller should install.  I 
see this as a bug because the packages removed are important to the overall 
functioning of an installed system.  (some of them relate to mail and so the 
system's mail capability is compromised until the packages are installed by
the user)

Further, upon noticing that debian.org had a new ISO for the NetInstaller,
I downloaded debian-9.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso and installed 3 more VMs, using
different mirror selections incase the problem was the one mirror I had been
using so far.

The three new VMs were installed using the same selections as before, but
having selected ftp.ca.debian.org, mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca and 
debian.mirror.netelligent.ca for each VM, respectively. I am therefore
fairly sure that this is not a mirror-specific problem and that the package
set has actually been changed accross the board.

To be clear, I am not claiming that the packages themselves have been removed
from the mirrors.  In fact I can successfully install all 19 missing packages
manually myself using the same mirror that the NetInstaller did.  I am saying
that the lists, dependency database or whatever it is, the metadata about
installing has been changed so that the NetInstaller will not download or
install the affected packages.

I believe that I am reasonable in expecting that the NetInstaller does not
suddenly omit important packages with time.  I can understand adding packages
to the list of to-be-installed, but not removing them.  Please look into this.

Thanks,

ajhlinuxuser

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.1
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_CA:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)