/usr/lib/base-config & templates ?

[pjordan@whitehorse.blackwire.com]

In trying to make a non-interactive install use my preferred settings,
I see that base config runs the scripts found in /usr/lib/base-config
calling upon /usr/share/debconf/confmodule and friends.

At first I thought a good way to get my settings into confidb
would be to run debconf-copydb on a configured system and
also on the unconfigured one (post debootstrap).  This
won't work though, because debconf-utils is not part
of base or required.  Also since apt-setup has not run
yet, I have no working sources.list.

Admittedly I could just rsync over a sources.list but this
breaks the whole point.

It seems that /usr/share/debconf/frontend will 
however try to load template files if it finds them
in the directory where the script is being run if not
being run from a postinst or preinst. 
  Am I right then in thinking that this is what I should do
  to preconfigure my settings when base-config gets run
  non-interactively ?

Thus I could wget an apt-setup template and a passwd template
and a tzconfig template and such, and then set
DEBIAN_FRONTEND to Noninteractive and run base-config
and have a reasonable attempt at a non-interactive install
that gets the right apt mirror, the right timezone and turns
on shadow and md5 ?

Regards y Saludos,
Peter