On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 02:29:27AM +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote: > Steve McIntyre <st...@einval.com> (2018-12-17): > > But... The problem you're most likely seeing is caused by a simple > > fact. The *netboot* image ends up downloading significant chunks of > > the installer and the base system at runtime from the suite it > > targets. For buster, that is still very much a moving target and it's > > likely to already have incompatibilities with the released 20181206 > > netboot image. > > > > Netboot images are *only* useful and safe when they exactly match the > > state of the Debian release they're targeting. That's either a stable > > release, or within a couple of days of the build happening if you're > > looking at testing. > > > > For any other purposes, IMHO you're massively better off using a > > _netinst_ image instead. Or install stable and upgrade. > > What Steve says is particularly true when there's a difference in major > libc version (2.27 vs. 2.28; the latter has just migrated to testing > right after the general block-udeb in britney was lifted). > >
Thanks for that. I have just test booting off a USB drive with the netinst.iso image (written with dd) and it works fine. This seems like an opportunity to improve the documentation... When I was looking at the notes on [1] I was unsure how to get the ISO image onto a USB stick. However that is now covered in the manual, so perhaps a small pointer would be helpful: For extra convenience, these images may also be written directly to a USB stick. + The <a href="https://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apa.html";>Installation Howto</a> how to do this. One other thing might help others avoid the same mistake: in [2] could something like this be added to the Notes section? * The "other images" such as netboot are only useful and safe when they exactly match the state of the Debian release they're targeting. In almost all cases that will be a _stable_ release. In particular, alpha and beta releases of the installer are likely to be unusable for more than a few days. Apologies for the noise Vince [1] https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/buster_di_alpha4/amd64/iso-cd/ [2] https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
