Hello,
I’m trying to automate a preseeded debian installer in a virtual private
server. The difficulty is that I cannot change the .iso image being presented
as the cdrom drive.
1. If I install debian from the 8.2.netinstall image then it sees /dev/vda
without any problems and installs fine.
2. If set a partition /dev/vda3 that is not part of running system, and format
with ext2 then I can host .isos on it.
3. GRUB2 can mount the partition and open the iso as loopback.
4. I can get GRUB to launch either the netinst kernel, or the hd-media kernel,
from the /dev/vda3 partition like this:
menuentry "Remaster ISO" {
set root='(hd0,3)'
loopback loop /remaster.iso
linux (loop)/install.amd/vmlinuz iso-scan/filename=/remaster.iso root=/dev/dva3
vga=788 auto=true priority=critical preseed/file=/preseed.cfg ---
initrd (loop)/install.amd/initrd.gz
(for hd-media I have different vmlinuz/initrd.gz in the partition root).
5. Neither of these kernels can see the /dev/vda or its partitions - I guess
there is no virtio-blk driver?
From these tests I gather that virtio is up and running later in the install
process (as the installer can write to this harddrive), but that it is
unavailable during the boot process. This leads me to two questions:
Q1. Which kernel/initrd is easier to modify to use the virtio-blk dirver?
Q2. How do I do that? :)
I’m unsure how to get the source of the kernel with a configuration that
matches the one in the installer image. If somebody could point to the correct
package / repository then I can probably change the configuration and rebuild
it.
Cheers,
Andrew
