Bug#762392: Publish self-contained debootstrapped tarballs
Package: cdimage.debian.org
Severity: wishlist
Installing Debian when debootstrap isn't available can be extremely
inconvenient, because the only alternative is the installer, which is:
- slow
- requires booting the media
- primarily aimed for stable
- inflexible and difficult to customize and/or automate
A better alternative in such situations is using debootstrapped
tarballs, which can be simply unpacked into a suitable mountpoint and
further configured (similar to Gentoo's stage3 tarballs). It should also
be faster as an installation method than using the Debian Installer.
Generating them can be quite straightforward, and doesn't even require
root privileges:
$ cdebootstrap --foreign --arch=ARCH [...]
$ tar [...]
Usecases:
- VM provisioning
- automated installs, possibly handing over to a configuration
management system
- rescue environments
- manual installation from an existing non-Debian OS
- custom setups unsupported by the Debian Installer
Generally, I don't think the Debian Installer is a good idea in such
cases, and it's best left for interactive installation.
Please consider distributing Debian in this manner.
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