[08:56] cjwatson, are you off today? I might propose another change...... [09:28] smartboyhw: feel free to propose it, but it's Saturday, I'm sure pestering me about it can wait until it isn't the weekend? [15:23] cjwatson or others: Please pay sometime to look into https://code.launchpad.net/~smartboyhw/wubi/bug-1080090/+merge/134776 [22:32] Does anyone have a working preseed for a distro served by old-releases.ubuntu.com? [22:32] I am trying to preseed ubuntu 7.10, but debconf seems to ignore "choose-mirror-bin mirror/http/hostname string old-releases.ubuntu.com" [22:51] ynniv: "choose-mirror-bin" should be "d-i" there, but that error wouldn't break installation, just leave some cruft on the installed system [22:51] ynniv: two possible things you might have done wrong: [22:52] ynniv: 1) you might be missing "d-i mirror/country string enter information manually" (it's "manual" in >=8.04, but 7.10 required the cumbersome "enter information manually") [22:54] ynniv: 2) I was going to have another possibility here but I've realised it's a non-issue :) [22:54] hah. ok, does https://gist.github.com/4101032 look like an appropriate chunk of preseed? [22:57] seems roughly plausible [22:57] if it still doesn't work, extract and post the syslog after an installation attempt with the DEBCONF_DEBUG=developer boot parameter [23:00] I'll give it a whirl. That was extremely helpful, thank you. [23:00] you're welcome [23:19] Afternoon, folks. I'm trying to track down anything related to the build process for the netboot kernel and initrd. Anyone know if its documented anywhere? [23:20] bg: It's all in the debian-installer source package [23:20] Note that the kernel is just the regular kernel [23:21] Building the debian-installer source package in the standard way produces a variety of installer images including the netboot ones [23:21] Awesome, thanks for the lead. [23:22] You can type 'make' in the build/ subdirectory therein to be offered a list of make targets that build single images rather than the whole lot (which takes a while) [23:22] I'm knee deep in trying to make network installs work with 12.04 on UEFI hardware. It is a very dark place. [23:23] Yeah, there's little prospect of that yet. [23:23] It's not even clear that it works on 12.10; Steve tells me that he ran into some as-yet-undiagnosed bug in GRUB's tftp driver when he tried. [23:24] I've got a flimsy setup that should work for our very limited deployment need, but it is not pretty. [23:25] What boot loader are you using - or are you launching the kernel directly somehow? [23:26] UEFI grabs iPXE over TFTP (for fancy menus, other OSes, etc). iPXE downloads a grub binary with an embedded kernel+initrd. [23:27] Using the casper vmlinuz and initrd gets me into a pretty functional state with console, but the netinst bits don't include the i915 driver, and vesafb doesn't work under UEFI [23:29] Right, so you don't have to rely on GRUB's networking drivers, which in any case weren't anything like sufficient in 12.04 [23:30] Even in upstream, the efinet http and tftp stuff exhibits mysterious hangs when attempting to download a kernel/initrd [23:30] Indeed, that was the bug I was alluding to above [23:30] Perhaps try efifb rather than the i915 driver? It's simpler [23:32] That's one of the things I'd like to try, but it's missing from the casper initrd so it brought me to the same conclusion: I need to build my own. [23:32] (and that's underway! thanks again for the tip) [23:32] Yeah, though if you want netboot then surely you don't mean the casper initrd long-term? [23:32] Unless you're netbooting the live image in which case the information above is inaccurate [23:32] I was only toying with the casper bits because I knew they worked when installing from USB [23:33] OK [23:33] To be clear, debian-installer builds the images in http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/ [23:33] (among others) [23:35] right, which is exactly the stuff we're using for vanilla PXE deployment [23:35] this EFI twist has been a big hurdle. [23:36] Tell me about it [23:36] I'm curious to see how the quantal backport kernel could make things even more complicated! e.g. in 6 months when another round of new hardware shows up that requires 3.5, we'll somehow need to use the backport kernel to install 12.04. [23:37] Actually the next debian-installer image set in precise will include images built using the quantal kernel [23:37] As an option [23:37] Oh, that's good to hear [23:37] It's needed for all the secure boot stuff [23:38] I'm plugging my ears on that topic. Things are complicated enough without introducing signing at this point. [23:38] Yeah, don't introduce it if you don't have to [23:39] Unfortunately I only got to plug my ears for just so long [23:39] Has the signing infra been a nightmare? [23:39] Moderately [23:41] And of course new and exciting firmware bugs [23:44] re: your comment before about the netboot kernel being standard, does it just reuse the -generic .config? [23:45] It literally copies the kernel [23:45] No point in us rebuilding it for the installer images [23:46] And yeah, for amd64 it's the -generic kernel [23:46] works for me! [23:46] You might possibly find http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Modify/CustomKernel helpful, though you'll need to substitute heavily for Ubuntu differences [23:47] Hopefully you don't actually need to rebuild the kernel and you can skip all that and the localudebs bits [23:47] Well, providing that the kernel udebs include the modules you need [23:47] If not then you'll have to glue that in [23:48] In extremis there are various tricks in the d-i build system for adding individual files - see e.g. build/README [23:49] For a one-off that may be rather quicker [23:49] Anyway, must go ... [23:49] Thanks so much for the help [23:49] Good luck :-) [23:49] Frankly, given how much cjwatson@ I see on bugs/lists, you're a machine. [23:49] I'd be lying if I said I hadn't poked in here looking for you specifically. [23:52] Heh, s/machine/insomniac/ ... [23:53] cjwatson: There's a difference? [23:54] You can switch machines off [23:54] I find a frying pan to the head can work wonders.