Hello d-i developers,

while working on an aarch64 ISO variant of the Window Maker Live[0] debian
derivate distribution, it was noted that, unlike its x86_64 and i386
counterparts, the debian-installer unfortunately always defaults to a
limited text based installation on the serial console.

While trying to force the graphical installation using the kernel parameter
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=gtk (as documented in [1]) seemingly appears to work, it
unfortunately also completely ignores the otherwise properly configured and
perfectly working preseed.cfg which is contained in the associated initrd.

This is the case when performed in a QEMU virtual machine. It has not yet been
verified on actual hardware due to the lack of ownership of any UEFI capable
ARM64 device.

Apart from the negligible effects on the amount of questions asked, it is
especially unfortunate that the preseed/late_command becomes unavailable. In
the case of wmlive this is of special importance for preconfiguration of the
installed system before its first boot up after installation. While the
installer itself appears to complete the graphical installation normally, the
installed system results to be incomplete as required for wmlive due to the
omitted preseed/late_command.

This affects the official debian-installer of both bookworm 12.12 and trixie
13.1, and also their earlier versions.

Downloading and investigating the current sources of the debian-installer from
its salsa.debian.org git [2] didn't shed any obvious light on why an existing
preseed.cfg contained in the initrd is ignored when the DEBIAN_FRONTEND=gtk
kernel parameter is used. This defintely needs to be verified by someone more
intimately acquainted with these sources.

A aarch64 ISO image and the accompanying sources for the debian-live build tree
for wmlive is available from [3]. Please note that the DEBIAN_FRONTEND=gtk
parameter was not used in this ISO image due to the described shortcomings, and
needs to be added manually to the graphical installer prompt in order to
reproduce the reported behaviour.

Please let me know if any relevant information should still be missing.

Thanks and regards,
Paul Seelig

[0] https://wmlive.sourceforge.net
[1] https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/arm64/ch05s03.en.html#installer-args
[2] https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/d-i.git
[3] https://sourceforge.net/projects/wmlive/files/wmlive-
bookworm-12.12/aarch64_experimental

The trigger making the aarch64 debian-installer always default to the newt
interface on the serial console was found to consist of the addition of a
preseed.cfg file to the installer's initrd.
If no pressed.cfg is added to the initrd, the graphical installer frontend
starts up and functions normally.

When instead of the initrd preseed method providing the preseed.cfg via kernel
parameter, e.g., 'preseed/file=/cdrom/install/gtk/preseed.cfg', the graphical
installer not only starts up normally but also properly recognizes and uses the
supplied preseed.cfg file.

So this appears to be a functional workaround in aarch64 for the reported
issue.

It might be worthwhile to mention this functional difference of preseeding
methods between architectures in the associated documentation.

Regards,
Paul