[09:57] <maxb> I wanted to use a server CD as a substitute for the alternate CD which is no longer produced, but despite preseeding tasksel/first in the same way the desktop CD does, I didn't end up with a desktop being booted into
[09:57] <maxb> Any suggestions on what the missing piece is?
[09:58] <cjwatson> Server does some slightly odd things; its preseeding of tasksel/force-tasks might be relevant.
[09:58] <cjwatson> Also, our CDs tend to only permit installing things from the CD itself.
[09:58] <cjwatson> You might be better off using the netboot mini.iso.
[09:59] <cjwatson> Since you're going to end up downloading a bunch of stuff anyway if you're installing desktop from a server image.
[10:00] <maxb> Hm. I did consider mini.iso, but I wanted the benefit of a grub setup to make my media EFI-bootable too
[10:01] <cjwatson> The mini.isos should be hybrid, I thought ...
[10:01] <cjwatson> The amd64 one, anyway
[10:01] <maxb> Also, I thought I'd managed to remove the server preseed stuff by substituting my own preseed file and changing the preseed file= boot option in the image
[10:01] <cjwatson> debian-installer (20100211ubuntu22) maverick; urgency=low
[10:01] <cjwatson> ...
[10:01] <cjwatson>   * Add GRUB EFI configuration on amd64, and make mini.iso images there
[10:01] <cjwatson>     multi-catalog.
[10:01] <cjwatson>  -- Colin Watson <cjwatson@ubuntu.com>  Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:11:36 +0100
[10:02] <cjwatson> Yeah, it's probably more the restriction to what's on the CD that's relevant.
[10:02] <maxb> Ah, whoops. I assumed the mini.iso was syslinux-only by definition
[10:03] <maxb> The server-based install I attempted definitely installed lots of desktop packages, it just didn't boot into X
[10:05] <maxb> Baffling, "tasksel tasksel/first multiselect ubuntu-desktop" somehow managed to get unity (amongst other things) installed but not ubuntu-desktop itself
[10:06] <cjwatson> It'll be installing whichever bits of the task it can find, I suppose.  Perhaps "d-i pkgsel/include string ubuntu-desktop" would do better
[10:06] <cjwatson> That'll go for the metapackage
[10:08] <maxb> Worth a try, though I'm intrigued how it managed to the subset it did
[10:09] <cjwatson> Seems odd indeed.  I could look at a syslog ...
[11:00] <maxb> It looks like it really did only install the bits of the task that were on the CD
[11:01] <maxb> But then the execution of /usr/lib/finish-install.d/01oem-config-udeb pulled assorted desktopish bits in
[11:01] <infinity> That makes sense, since it was looking for the task header in its known packages, which was only from the CD.
[11:01] <cjwatson> Right.  I think you will find it very hard to make this work right from the server CD.
[11:01] <infinity> mini.iso or a netinst would definitely be a saner way to install desktops via d-i.
[11:01]  * maxb will change course and play with mini.iso
[11:02] <infinity> s/netinst/netboot/
[11:02] <cjwatson> This is unfortunately basically a case of galloping requirements clashes back in the early days of Ubuntu.
[11:02] <cjwatson> I might do it differently nowadays ...
[11:24] <maxb> Hmm. The mini.iso *does* include an EFI grub, but it doesn't include the /EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.EFI and /EFI/BOOT/grubx64.efi files that the other boot media have
[11:26] <cjwatson> I think it's laid out a bit differently.  It should still boot ...
[11:31] <maxb> It should boot in BIOS mode, but I can't see how it's going to work in EFI mode
[11:54] <cjwatson> I thought it had the relevant bits embedded in an El Torito catalog entry.
[11:54] <cjwatson> It's been a while.
[12:20] <maxb> Ah
[12:20] <maxb> It is entirely possible, but that wouldn't survive the translation from .iso to USB stick