[ipxe-devel] Debian installer doesn't load preseed

[Christian Nilsson]

On Sat, 30 Mar 2019 at 19:34, Ghassan Elrayah <ghel at spreadshirt.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 3/30/19 6:58 PM, Christian Nilsson wrote:
> > On Sat, 30 Mar 2019 at 17:58, Ghassan Elrayah <ghel at spreadshirt.net> wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I am facing a problem loading the preseed file for Debian installation.
> >> The unattended installation stops always at the mirror country option
> >> which is defined in my preseed. The preseed file is in the new server
> >> either in /tmp or under / depending on the path I specified. But the
> >> installer just ignores it. I don't know if its a Debian bug or an ipxe
> >> issue. I am not using UEFI rather BIOS.
> >>
> >>
> >> But the result is always the same, after configuring the language, the
> >> locales and keyboard, I have to choose the interface, because the server
> >> has four of them and I cannot preseed the correct one. Then I enter the
> >> hostname manually which is desired, since the preseed is for hardware
> >> server installation as Ganeti node, but then the mirror defined in the
> >> preseed is not picked neither the further steps of the installation process.
> >>
> >> Thank you for your support
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> Ghassan Elrayah
> >> System Engineer
> >>
> > First of I know nothing about Debian.
> > As I understand it some of your choices in your pressed file is detected?
> > If so this is entirely an Debian issue and not iPXE related?
> >
> > Can you check that your pressed file is downloaded and restored into
> > the running linux system?
> > Also check that /proc/cmdline contains what you expect it to.
> >
> > (if you where using EFI then the file would never exist in /tmp/ but
> > that is due to the fact that cpio is not created when starting efi
> > binaries, also the extra initrd= lines would be needed as kernel
> > options)
> >
> > One thing that I do note...
> > if you have kernel line with arguments and then use imgargs - then the
> > arguments on the kernel line is gone,
> > My preferred way here is to put everything on the kernel line to avoid
> > the confusion.
> >
> > /Christian
> Hi Christian and thanks for the reply.
>
> I can confirm that the preseed file is downloaded on the target machine
> and the /proc/cmdline contains exactly the arguments I am passing to the
> Kernel through the imgargs with the following version of menu.ipxe,
> unfortunately without success:
>
> :d10-dc-node
> set base-url https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/amd64/daily/netboot/debian-installer/amd64
> initrd ${base-url}/initrd.gz
> initrd tftp://my.ipxe.server/preseed/debian_buster_node.seed /tmp/debian_buster_node.seed
> kernel ${base-url}/linux auto preseed/url=tftp://my.ipxe.server/preseed/debian_buster_node.seed netcfg/choose_interface=eno1 auto-install/enable=true fb=false debconf/frontend=noninteractive debian-installer=en_US.UTF-8 auto locale=en_US.UTF-8 console-setup/ask_detect=false kbd-chooser/method=us keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap=us keyboard-configuration/modelcode=pc105 keyboard-configuration/layout=USA keyboard-configuration/variant=USA BOOT_DEBUG=2 --
> boot
>
> the only detected preseed choices are those provided by the Kernel
> arguments in the menu.ipxe, which are relevant for the language choice
> and they cannot be proseeded according to the official preseed docs.
> The preseed file is under /tmp and the /proc/cmd contains exactly the
> Kernel arguments.
>
> --
>
> Ghassan Elrayah
> System Engineer
>

On the kernel cmdline ...
preseed/url=tftp://my.ipxe.server/preseed/debian_buster_node.seed
 dosn't make sense?
I don't think that it supports tftp in the Debian init scripts.
Eighter point it to the file in /tmp/ or use a http url which is the
likely supported case (but I might as well mention that some initrds
do not support DNS, so using http://ip is the safest in terms of first
test)