Re: How to make preseed.cfg available in no-internet install?

[Kynn Jones <kynnjo+debianwl@gmail.com>]

My apologies for this late reply.  (I've been having difficulties with
gmail & SMTP.)

> On 07/04/2014 05:07 PM, Brian wrote:
>
> ...What I read him as saying he
> wants to do is to have the preseed file on a separate (writable) device,
> probably a USB stick, and have it be automatically accessed from the
> unchanging boot media.

Yes!  That's exactly it.

I already know one way to do it (which I described in my first post), but it is laborious and error-prone.

Basically, I'm looking for a convenient way to tell the Debian installer:

  1. mount /dev/sdb1 (with -t vfat), and look for a preseeds file called preseed.cfg at the root directory of the mounted volume;

  2. use the settings priority=critical auto=true

(I think that one can do (2) through directives in preseed.cfg, but I'm not sure.  If true, then it all reduces to (1).)

The boot media does not have to be CD, but I strongly prefer it.  It's somewhat superstitious of me, I suppose, but I like the assurance that it has not been modified, either by me or anybody else.

In addition, I figure that any method that works when the boot media is CD will also work when the boot media is a USB stick, but the converse does not necessarily hold.  Therefore, a method that works when booting from CD is bound to be more flexible.

Of course, I realize that there may just not be any good way to do what I want to do when booting from CD, in which case, I'll boot from USB and let it rip.

Thanks for your comments!

kynn