Hi fellow Debian Users

I am currently trying to build an USB stick that does a scripted install
of Debian. This works very well, and much much easier with UEFI, where
you can just edit the preseed.cfg file instead of rebuilding an ISO
every time you make a change.

But: I am stuck with getting rid of two groups of prompts:

The first three prompts in any install are language, country and keymap (German, Austria, German) in my case. I have googled around a bit and
included the following for now (some of it probably redundant, useless
or cargo cultish):

d-i debian-installer/locale string de_AT
d-i debconf/language string de

d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select de
d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string de
d-i keyboard-configuration/variantcode string
d-i console-keymaps-usb/keymap select German
d-i console-keymaps-at/keymap select German

Some of this I grabbed from
https://preseed.debian.net/debian-preseed/bookworm/
but this is a lot of information in these files.

The above is not enough to get my three selections without
being prompted.

Similar with the menu where the desktop environment is selected.
I want LXDE and "SSH Server". I always drop back into the menu.
I have tried:

d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server
d-i tasksel/desktop multiselect lxde

I am using the most recent netinstall image 12.8.0, and
using this recipe for UEFI configurations:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/WritableUSBStick

All other configurations (e.g. partitioning, mirror etc.) are picked up
just fine.

Any hints for me?

/ralph

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2024 at 7:35 AM
From: "Ralph Aichinger" <ra@h5.or.at>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Preseed install, Selection of Language/Country/Keyboard and Desktop Environment

Hi fellow Debian Users

I am currently trying to build an USB stick that does a scripted install
of Debian. This works very well, and much much easier with UEFI, where
you can just edit the preseed.cfg file instead of rebuilding an ISO
every time you make a change.

But: I am stuck with getting rid of two groups of prompts:

The first three prompts in any install are language, country and keymap (German, Austria, German) in my case. I have googled around a bit and included the following for now (some of it probably redundant, useless
or cargo cultish):

d-i debian-installer/locale string de_AT
d-i debconf/language string de

d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select de
d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string de
d-i keyboard-configuration/variantcode string
d-i console-keymaps-usb/keymap select German
d-i console-keymaps-at/keymap select German

Some of this I grabbed from https://preseed.debian.net/debian-preseed/bookworm/
but this is a lot of information in these files.

The above is not enough to get my three selections without
being prompted.

Similar with the menu where the desktop environment is selected.
I want LXDE and "SSH Server". I always drop back into the menu.
I have tried:

d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server
d-i tasksel/desktop multiselect lxde

I am using the most recent netinstall image 12.8.0, and
using this recipe for UEFI configurations:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/WritableUSBStick

All other configurations (e.g. partitioning, mirror etc.) are picked up
just fine.

Any hints for me?

/ralph

I do it differently.

I do an install to a hard drive and when I get it configured to what I want i copy to an USB drive.

Then any time I need to do a install I simply partition a drive, create the filesystems mount the drive and the USB drive and rsync from the USB drive. Then I tickle the new drives innards unmount and place it into the machine. All the "installs" then
start from the same "format/place"

I can do many "installs" in less time it takes shake a stick.

Works for any distro.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 4 Dec 2024 13:35 +0100, from ra@h5.or.at (Ralph Aichinger):

But: I am stuck with getting rid of two groups of prompts:

The first three prompts in any install are language, country and keymap (German, Austria, German) in my case. I have googled around a bit and included the following for now (some of it probably redundant, useless
or cargo cultish):

d-i debian-installer/locale string de_AT
d-i debconf/language string de

d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select de
d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string de
d-i keyboard-configuration/variantcode string
d-i console-keymaps-usb/keymap select German
d-i console-keymaps-at/keymap select German

I think you want to s,debconf/language,debian-installer/language,.

Compare https://michael.kjorling.se/debian-12-bookworm-preseed/ under
the B.4.1 heading about half way down the page.

Similar with the menu where the desktop environment is selected.
I want LXDE and "SSH Server". I always drop back into the menu.
I have tried:

d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server
d-i tasksel/desktop multiselect lxde

Unless that's been changed recently, that doesn't look quite right. My corresponding (without any GUI) is:

tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, ssh-server
d-i pkgsel/upgrade select full-upgrade

By all means feel free to use mine as a starting point if you want.

--
Michael Kjörling
🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 12/4/24 13:35, Ralph Aichinger wrote:

Hi fellow Debian Users

I am currently trying to build an USB stick that does a scripted install
of Debian. This works very well, and much much easier with UEFI, where
you can just edit the preseed.cfg file instead of rebuilding an ISO
every time you make a change.

But: I am stuck with getting rid of two groups of prompts:

The first three prompts in any install are language, country and keymap (German, Austria, German) in my case. I have googled around a bit and included the following for now (some of it probably redundant, useless
or cargo cultish):

d-i debian-installer/locale string de_AT

The "local" is less "flexible".
Look at [1], the first few lines

Similar with the menu where the desktop environment is selected.
I want LXDE and "SSH Server". I always drop back into the menu.
I have tried:

Also look at [1] for "tasksel".

[1] https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/example-preseed.txt

--
John Doe

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wed, Dec 04, 2024 at 04:03:38PM +0100, john doe wrote:

d-i debian-installer/locale string de_AT

The "local" is less "flexible".
Look at [1], the first few lines

Similar with the menu where the desktop environment is selected.
I want LXDE and "SSH Server". I always drop back into the menu.
I have tried:

Also look at [1] for "tasksel".

[1] https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/example-preseed.txt

Thanks, John! Actually I have tried out the settings in example-preseed
too, but it is not easy to find out (with so much stuff commented out,
in what combination these entries have to be commented in in what
scenario). At least the combinations I tried did not work.

Actually I do not need any flexibility, just having what is the Default
for German (or Germany or Austria, I basically do not care) would be
enough for me. But neither the blanket "locale" value, nor the more
detailed ones seemed to work for me.

I think I made progress by configuring stuff in "Auto mode" which worked
for most of the stuff I wanted to change, even if it seems a bit more
clumsy, described in B.2.3 here:

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apbs02.en.html#preseed-auto

but see my reply to the other mail in this thread.

/ralph

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wed, Dec 04, 2024 at 03:00:17PM +0100, pocket@homemail.com wrote:

I do an install to a hard drive and when I get it configured to what I
want i copy to an USB drive.

Then any time I need to do a install I simply partition a drive,
create the filesystems mount the drive and the USB drive and rsync
from the USB drive. Then I tickle the new drives innards unmount
and place it into the machine. All the "installs" then start from
the same "format/place"

This is of course a very legitimate strategy to do a larger number of
installs. But while it has benefits, it also has drawbacks: There are
parts of the system that have to be created individually per
installation (e.g. host keys for ssh), and storing the install in its
installed state might lead to other problems (version drift compared to
other new installs, having problems to really reproduce the manual steps of
the first install a few months later, etc., having to store a disk image
vs. just having a preeseed file (and a few similar config files, maybe a
small script).

And a fresh install is a fresh install. No manual interventions, less
mistakes that can happen.

I can do many "installs" in less time it takes shake a stick.

I don't doubt that, I am not sure it is the right thing for my scenario
though. I really want to have the preseed install if possible.

/ralph

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hello Michael, thanks for your reply

On Wed, Dec 04, 2024 at 02:38:29PM +0000, Michael Kjörling wrote:

Compare https://michael.kjorling.se/debian-12-bookworm-preseed/ under
the B.4.1 heading about half way down the page.

Actually right after my mail to this list I found your site by googling,
and tried out those very same lines for B.4.1 by pasting them into my
preseed file (not that I have a Swedish, keyboard but I thought it would be easy to change to de afterwards. Those lines did not work for me though.

I must try out what happens in a qemu, maybe something is weird in my
UEFI boot?

tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, ssh-server
d-i pkgsel/upgrade select full-upgrade

I don't quite get the distinction between "tasksel/first" and "tasksel/desktop". When I do a "tasksel --list-tasks" in the shell, it
is just one list of all tasks (with various desktops mixed in).

What eventually did work for me was putting stuff in "auto mode" like
described in B.2.3, in grub.cfg.

Putting language=en country=AT locale=de_AT.UTF-8 keymap=de desktop=lxde-desktop
there seemed to work (I am not currently at the machine and had to stop
in the middle of trying stuff out).

Is it possible, that some of this stuff is broken/behaves differently on
a real, physical, UEFI machine?

By all means feel free to use mine as a starting point if you want.

I really tried. I was hoping to get some weird Swedish keyboard, but to
no avail, the configuration dialogs just appeared anyway ;)

/ralph

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)