Richard Owlett wrote:
Why - learn to use preseeding. Why now - I think I've found an install related bug. Using preseed.cfg would eliminate human error as cause. For simplicity and repeatability I'm installing from DVD with no network connection of any sort. The DVD is disk 1 of 8 of a commercial copy of Debian 6.0.5 which has been used to do several successful instals. I've read the appropriate sections of the "d-i Manual", an assortment of web pages, and searched for related posts on this list. I found bits and pieces with too much detail on how to tweak the example preseed.cfg and very little on how to launch everything. What obvious thing am I missing. Is there a "Preseeding for Newbies" page somewhere?
I have now succeeded to the point of a red screen with a message box stating "The file needed for preconfiguration could not be retrieved from file:///devd/sdb1/preseed.cfg."
This is a *MAJOR* improvement. Previously the installer would go on its merry fully manual way. I'm not sure what changed - perhaps the act of slowing down to manually record each step slowed me down enough to prevent typographical error(s)?
*My procedure*1. Partition/format a 16 GB USB stick as single primary partition formatted as ext2 using Gparted. 2. Copy a sample preseed.cfg to it (some answers had been changed to match my needs).
3. Boot from DVD 1 of 8 of Debian 6.0.5 4. From the menu choose "Automated install" 5. Press <Tab> to edit6. Backspace to remove "Quiet" leaving "--" as last thing on the line.
7. Append "preseed/file=/sdb1/preseed.cfg" to the line 8. Press <Enter>. If it's not in that list, IT WAS NOT DONE. What's wrong? Help please.