Re: Shipping the mini.iso files with the installer-images package?
On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 11:16:51AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> writes:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I just created
> > https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer-netboot-images/-/merge_requests/3,
> > which removes the "grep -v mini.iso" from the "get-images.sh" script.
> > The idea being that it can be useful to have a mini.iso available
> > locally in case you want to install a VM with libvirt. While it's
> > possible to PXE boot a VM and install that way, this involves some
> > infrastructure that needs to be set up, and pointing to a .iso file that
> > exists locally seems easier.
> >
> > I usually have a netboot mini.iso file in my home directory for that
> > purpose, but it needs to be kept up to date with every point release,
> > and that's a bit of an annoyance. I think it would be easier to just
> > have it in the debian-installer-netboot-images package.
>
> I presume you're currently downloading a published mini.iso, rather than
> building them locally, is that right?
Correct.
> Rather than packaging up the mini.iso's, how about having a package that
> acts as an installer, and downloads the published image that matches the
> relevant kerrnel version.
... that could very much work too! I hadn't thought of that.
> The reason I think that might be worth the effort is that I suspect that
> quite a lot of the mini.iso's would have almost no users (depending on
> architecture etc), so copying them across the whole mirror network seems
> like a significant waste of resources.
>
> Personally, I tend to use the netinst for the purpose you describe, and
> think that it might be quite useful to have a package that would
> maintain a copy of the current image on my systems, so such a package
> could be more widely useful than just for mini.iso downloads.
I had a quick look, and it turns out that both the d-i directory in the
mirror network and the CD mirror network have a SHA256SUMS file with
image names and relative paths. Both have other checksum files too, but
the two are not compatible there (d-i has MD5SUMS (yuck), cdimage has
SHA512SUMS).
I could imagine writing a tool that, when given a URI for a SHA256SUMS
file and a local path, and updates the file if the checksum does not
match (or the file is absent)
They are both signed, but unfortunately not in the same way -- the d-i
directory is signed through (In)Release(.gpg), the cd network through a
SHA256SUMS.sign file right next to the SHA256SUMS one. But that can be
worked around.
That sounds like a much more reasonable way forward, although I'm not
keen on extending di-netboot-assistant (it's massive already, and does
very different things). At any rate, I'll have a look at implementing
this. Thanks for the suggestion!
--
w@uter.{be,co.za}
wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}
I will have a Tin-Actinium-Potassium mixture, thanks.
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