Hi D-I team,

I have been attempting to preseed a jessie install (in virtualbox, using
packer) and have found the beta 2 release resistant to this. Following
the documentation[1] I am providing the following boot parameters:

auto url=http://<ip>:<port>/jessie_amd64.cfg

As far as I can tell d-i is silently ignoring the url= parameter, though
it does seem to be respecting 'auto' as it does auto-configure
networking before asking any questions. I can see from my web server's
logs that no request is made to retrieve the preseed file, and I get no
error or warning if I pass a url that should 404.

Providing identical boot parameters command works without issue in both
wheezy and jessie beta 1, and I cannot find any evidence that this
parameter should have changed between beta 1 and 2.

Regards,
Nicholas Robinson-Wall

[1]: http://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.amd64/apbs02.html

Nicholas Robinson-Wall <nick@robinson-wall.com> writes:

Just out of interest, are you using that as the whole kernel command
line, or adding it to the end of the command line that was already
there?

I've not checked recently, but I find that documentation confusing,
because it relies on there being a kernel target named "auto" which adds
auto=true priority=critical to the command line.

Personally, when using standard d-i media I find the Automatic Install
option in the Advanced submenu, hit TAB to get to the command line, and
add url=... (and generally classes=..., but that's because I use that
within the stuff you can find here:  http://hands.com/d-i/  which also
may provide useful hints).

BTW what boot image are you using?  Could it be something that is tuned
for file= preseeding, which may not actually have the
network-preseed.udeb?

Cheers, Phil.

Nicholas Robinson-Wall <nick@robinson-wall.com> writes:

Just out of interest, are you using that as the whole kernel command
line, or adding it to the end of the command line that was already
there?

I've not checked recently, but I find that documentation confusing,
because it relies on there being a kernel target named "auto" which adds
auto=true priority=critical to the command line.

Personally, when using standard d-i media I find the Automatic Install
option in the Advanced submenu, hit TAB to get to the command line, and
add url=... (and generally classes=..., but that's because I use that
within the stuff you can find here:  http://hands.com/d-i/  which also
may provide useful hints).

BTW what boot image are you using?  Could it be something that is tuned
for file= preseeding, which may not actually have the
network-preseed.udeb?

Cheers, Phil.

Hi Philip,

I tried both tab to append to the default install kernel parameters
(which is what I was doing on wheezy) and esc to get the boot: prompt.
Originally I was trying auto=true priority=critical but shortened it to
just 'auto' after reading that doc.

You've hit the nail on the head. network-preseed is missing from this
image:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/jessie_di_beta_2/amd64/iso-cd/debian-jessie-DI-b2-amd64-netinst.iso

It's definitely present in the beta 1 amd64 netinst image:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/jessie_di_beta_1/amd64/iso-cd/debian-jessie-DI-b1-amd64-netinst.iso

I'd definitely expect the network-preseed udeb to be included in the
netinst image. Is this a regression?

Thanks,
Nick

Hi Philip,

I tried both tab to append to the default install kernel parameters
(which is what I was doing on wheezy) and esc to get the boot: prompt.
Originally I was trying auto=true priority=critical but shortened it to
just 'auto' after reading that doc.

You've hit the nail on the head. network-preseed is missing from this
image:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/jessie_di_beta_2/amd64/iso-cd/debian-jessie-DI-b2-amd64-netinst.iso

It's definitely present in the beta 1 amd64 netinst image:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/jessie_di_beta_1/amd64/iso-cd/debian-jessie-DI-b1-amd64-netinst.iso

I'd definitely expect the network-preseed udeb to be included in the
netinst image. Is this a regression?

Thanks,
Nick

I had the same problem.
It turns out, now you have to put "---" (triple dash) before the parameters
that should be parsed by debian-installer.