Yes in general flash storage is cheap, not quite as cheap as optical, but not expensive either. In my case it's for an installation from a flash drive so size is not a particular concern. I just like to minimize the image for convenience, much faster to move around and copy archives in the megabytes than gigabytes. I also do other personalizations while I'm at it such as preseeding/preconfiguration and a few tweaks in startup.
That brings me to another question I have. I'd like to figure out how to exert some control over the udebs anna wants to load the packages debootstrap wants to install. It seems there's a lot of fat I can trim for an install tailored to a particular machine. Not much detail I can find on those mechanisms. -------------------------------------------- On Sun, 1/14/18, Richard Owlett <[email protected]> wrote: Subject: Re: User Build Question To: [email protected] Date: Sunday, January 14, 2018, 7:05 AM On 01/14/2018 07:59 AM, Craig Block wrote: > Hello debian-boot subscribers, > > I'm doing a personalized cdrom build of debian-installer using the 8.10 dist on i386. I have a small issue. I'm adding all the udebs normally retrieved from the pool by appending them to the base file in the packages directory. This is so I can make a minimal base installation image without manually adding the fairly large number of udebs normally retrieved from the pool. It also has the benefit of speeding up the installation. All works fine, but debian-installer insists on retrieving the libc6-udeb package from the pool. That one udeb has to be there so debian-installer doesn't abort. Is there some way I can fix that? > > I have in mind a similar project. Although there is much on the web about custom Install CD's; the pages always assume the reader has the same background as author. It leaves me confused. I'd love to see a write-up at the project level. That is not just a recipe, but including the goal of the project and reasoning behind choices made at significant milestones. I wish to end up with a personalized build of debian-installer. Note Bene: The total absence of mention cdrom or anything ISO9660 related. Think of a world where the cost of blank 64 GB flash drives was similar to blank DVDs. I don't expect that to happen, but personally a cost/benefit ratio would strongly favor the flash drive. TIA
