[Freedombox-discuss] qemu squeeze armel image

[bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org]

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 04:03:50PM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:00:40 +0200, bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org wrote:
> ...
> > > I can host that if people find it useful, although if that's a a vanilla
> > > install, I'd think it might be better to publish the recipe somehow
> > > (with as much of the install automated as possible) as that will give us
> > > a quicker download, and will give us a starting point on which to build
> > > a fully automated install, which is almost certainly going to be useful
> > > at some point.
> > 
> > Good point, I'll publish on the wiki the way to create such an image. I'll
> > try to put some preseeding too in the process, even if it won't be
> > possible to preseed stuff like the language.
> 
> Well, one approach is to preseed most stuff, and leave debconf to ask
> that question.  Another is to use something like ubuntu's oem-config
> which allows one to re-ask such questions on first boot.  Finally, you
> can simply tell people how to preseed their favoured locale settings as
> well (it is of course possible, but as you're hinting, not something
> that one can usefully set globally)
> 
> I suppose we could add something to auto-detect it somehow -- what do
> people need locale's for BTW?  If the main UI is a web interface, we
> might be able to just use the language settings from their browser,
> although I'd imagine there is some problem with that.

One downside might be if they intend to run screen, mutt and irssi on
their FB, then it might be interesting for them to have the correct
locales. Sure people doing that are probably able to setup their locale
the wat they want. I'd find it cleaner if FB's locales were correctly set
though.

Another possibility is to provide debian-installer images with most
stuffs preseeded appart for some settings like network and languages
maybe. This image could be directly shipped on the hardware, so that when
people boot it for the 1st time, they get just some basic questions.

There's a recipe to prepare debian-installer images with network-console
access here : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Remote. People would
just have to ssh their FB to answer this questions. That could even be
extended to ask them which FB module they want to install, and they would
be installed at the end of the debian installation process.

Most annoying part I see of this is the partition layout, which shoudl
maybe be decided by this project so that people don't have to do this
kinda geek part of the installation. I guess working with LVM could be a
way to go.

> > That's an interesting starting point though, how would this automated
> > installation be done..? Preseeding could help, but we'd still need to have
> > some user input like for setting up the language. Or maybe provide a
> > default installed system image, and then the user would change some of the
> > settings we couldn't define during the build of this image (like
> > language).
> 
> It's about time I updated my auto-install stuff to work well with
> squeeze, so I'll see if I can get something that creates the images
> we're talking about, and will post info on the wiki once I'm done.

great :)

> > > Not that I'm trying to discourage you, as an image for everyone to work
> > > From might well be useful, and would provide a point of comparison for
> > > anyone subsequently coming up with auto-install stuff.
> > 
> > Yeah, I guess both are usefull, the documentation/preseeding for automated
> > installation/build tests, and prebuild images for people that want to work
> > on higher level stuffs, without spending too much time by installing a
> > system.
> > 
> > > So, send me a URL (and provide a GPG signature for the image) and I'll
> > > publish both for you.
> > 
> > Well, that's the point, if I had a URL, I would have send it here :)
> 
> Ah, I was assuming you just didn't have the bandwidth, but could afford
> one download.  Never mind, seems like you have it covered.

> Cheers, Phil.
> -- 
> |)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
> |-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
> |(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND