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Bug#1106127: blendsel: Blendsel does not install hamradio blend from installer



Hi Dave,

And thanks for the report.

Dave Hibberd <hibby@debian.org> (2025-05-19):
> When installing debian from RC-1 netinst on a VM, I am unable to
> install the 'hamradio' blend packages with blendsel. The installation
> step skips straight to the next step without downloading any files
> from the repo. This is true for both graphical and text installers.

Yeah, no changes are expected between both versions, what is most
expected to matter is:
 - the image type and its contents (netinst vs. dvd) combined with
   connectivity: e.g. uninstallable dependencies because neither
   available on the mirror nor on the image;
 - command used to install the packages.

(From memory, this is not a definitive statement.)

> Running blendsel on my own machine prompts the expected response.
> Trying to apt install task-hamradio-blend similarly installs packages
> as I'd expect.
> 
> The only things I can think are to blame is that there are two
> applications requiring interaction through debconf (radioclk, xastir)

Those packages really should (if not must, I'm not diving back into the
Debian Policy) support noninteractive installation. Even outside d-i,
it's way better to get a package installed but {un,mis}configured, than
blocking/erroring out (probably leaving packages in some unclean state
at the apt/dpkg level) if the noninteractive frontend is used, stdin
pointing to /dev/null, etc.

d-i itself is driving debconf, and ISTR there's some passthrough thing,
but I don't recall packages asking questions when running the good old
pkgsel (wrapper around tasksel), which was forked into blendsel. More
on that in the final paragraph. 

> and something that removes systemd-timesyncd - again, I think this is
> radioclk, it Recommends: ntp (>= 1:4.2.2+dfsg-1) | ntpsec | chrony

blendsel uses the same logic as pkgsel, which should cope with
removals, at least in theory:

    blendsel.pl:    push @cmd, qw{apt-get -q -y -o APT::Install-Recommends=true -o APT::Get::AutomaticRemove=true -o Acquire::Retries=3 install};

And if that works in the installed system, that means a suitable
combination of packages can be found (I'll leave details like “at this
stage, the bootloader isn't installed yet”, that seems very improbable
to be a contributing factor here).

> Will blendsel in d-i choke on either debconf interactions or package
> removals? Why would this have an effect before any packages have been
> downloaded?

It would be interesting to see what was logged, you'll find that in
/var/log/installer/syslog. You can grep for blendsel (I'd imagine) or
include the whole file, *compressed* (to make sure it reaches the bug
tracking system and the debian-boot@lists.debian.org mailing list),
using reply-all.

Thanks already!


Cheers,
-- 
Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org)            <https://debamax.com/>
D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant

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