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

Sat Mar 30 19:04:28 UTC 2019

Thanks Geert for your reply,

I'll use dhcp to set hostname and IP. I cannot use static network 
configurations because I'll use this to deploy all of our hardware and 
they are really different, DELL, Supermicro etc. So I am setting the 
host name and IP manually for the test.
My major problem is that the preseed file is not being used by the 
installer.

On 3/30/19 7:43 PM, Geert Stappers wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 06:58:36PM +0100, Christian Nilsson wrote:
>> On Sat, 30 Mar 2019 at 17:58, Ghassan Elrayah 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.
> Hold on    ;-)
>
>
>>> Here is my menu.ipxe
>>>
>>> :d10-dc-node
>>> set base-url https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/amd64/daily/netboot/debian-installer/amd64
>>> kernel ${base-url}/linux auto=true preseed/url=tftp://my.ipxe.server/preseed/debian_buster_node.seed
>>> initrd ${base-url}/initrd.gz
>>> initrd tftp://my.ipxe.server/preseed/debian_buster_node.seed
>>> /tmp/debian_buster_node.seed
>>> imgargs linux 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
>>>
>>> I also tried it this way:
>>>
>>>   ....
>>>
>>> and this way:
>>>
>>>   ....
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> Here is the relvant part of the preseed:
>>>
>>> ### Keyboard
>>>   ...
>>> ### Locales
>>>   ...
>>> ### Time zone
>>>   ...
>>> ### Network
>>> d-i netcfg/choose_interface select                  eno1
>>> d-i netcfg/wireless_wep                             string
>>>
>>> ### Mirror settings
>>>   ...
>>>
>>> Thank you for your support
>>>
>> 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.
> Debian-installer does support booting from USB-storage, CD-ROM, harddisk
> and network boot.  All methods do use the method for user input ( "debconf" )
> The answers on user input can be preseed. Hey, we known that.   :-)
>
> The installer doesn't start with reading a preseed file. That is because
> it can't be told what the default location is. ( The boot methods differ )
> That is why kernel boot parameters are used.  Hey, original poster did
> know that.
>
> There are two corner cases that o.p. is struggling with:
> * hostname
> * network device
>
> I have 'hostname' work-a-rounded with this in my preseed file
> ---8<----8<----8<---
> # Any hostname and domain names assigned from dhcp take precedence over
> # values set here. However, setting the values still prevents the
> # questions
> # from being shown, even if values come from dhcp.
> d-i netcfg/get_hostname string unassigned-hostname
> d-i netcfg/get_domain string prd.example.com
>
> # We want to force a hostname, regardless of what either the DHCP server
> # returns
> # or what the reverse DNS entry for the IP is.
> d-i netcfg/hostname string minerva-db-3
>
> # NOTE FIXME TODO   DNS content
>
> ---8<----8<----8<---
>
> For the 'network device' I haven't yet a solution. Perhaps I do,
> but I'm not sure. (Last hardware install was a server that got
> an additional NIC )
>
> My preseed file does have
> ---8<----8<----8<---
> # netcfg will choose an interface that has link if possible. This makes it
> # skip displaying a list if there is more than one interface.
> d-i netcfg/choose_interface select eno49
>
> # configure the network manually
> d-i netcfg/disable_autoconfig boolean true
>
> d-i netcfg/dhcp_failed note
> d-i netcfg/dhcp_options select Configure network manually
>
> #  but it does NOT work
> #  we set static IP address after the install with other tooling
> #  the server reboots as DHCP client
>
> d-i netcfg/get_ipaddress string 10.717.248.333
> d-i netcfg/get_netmask string 255.255.255.192
> d-i netcfg/get_gateway string 10.717.248.65
> d-i netcfg/get_nameservers string 172.906.507.11
> d-i netcfg/confirm_static boolean true
>
> # Disable that annoying WEP key dialog.
> d-i netcfg/wireless_wep string
> ---8<----8<----8<---
> However with valid IP addresses.
>
> Reason for posting it here is that it has entries that I have not seen
> in "copy and paste" from the original poster.
>
>
> Groeten
> Geert Stappers

-- 

Ghassan Elrayah
System Engineer
Mail: ghassan.elrayah at spreadshirt.net

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