This is not clear. It sounds like a riddle. Please provide examples of usage of each.
>> It would be helpful if you could provide your proposed profile in >> more detail. I will, now that I know you want this. But first in this message and your next reply, I want to eliminate usage errors as the problem. Then we can move into the details of the profile. > If you want to override parts of the "default" profile, you also need > ~/my-simple-cdd/profiles/default.* as well. The "default" profile is > always included, and for questions asked very early in debian-installer, > the only way to preseed some questions using simple-cdd. Wait wait whoah whoah. The docs I've been reading for weeks don't sound like this at all. I'm going to explain what I've been lead to believe. You will hopefully tell me *specifically* how I am wrong, and suggest correct usage instead. My objective is to build a QEMU image of an installer that requires zero (ZERO) user interaction, and can actually be run headless, because it knows the answers ahead of time. Then I want this VM to automatically run a script after Debian is install, and this script pulls from a private Git repo, and runs another script from that repo. That's the objective. I've been lead to believe that to accomplish this, I need a custom.preseed file that answers all of the important questions. And I need a custom.postinst that is a BASH script. And these must be the only files read by build-simple-cdd, and they go in profiles/ under the directory I run build-simple-cdd from (which is ~/my-simple-cdd). I've been lead to believe that if I put custom.preseed and custom.postinst into a profiles/ directory under ~/my-simple-cdd, and I run `build-simple-cdd --profiles custom` from within ~/my-simple-cdd, then the custom profile will be read. The implication from the docs is that *only* the custom profile will be read if I am using `--profiles custom`. But when I run with `--profiles custom`, I get an image, which I run in QEMU and I see a normal default Debian installer that asks me if I want graphical vs text, etc. and then asks me to choose a language and I know I (think I) put that in my custom.preseed file. > That said, not including or aggressively overriding contents in the default > profile is > possible to break how simple-cdd works, so be selective in what you > override. That's not helpful! Please point me to the docs that explain the precise interplay between default and custom profiles, including a specific list of what I must not override! > In general, I've tried to make the default profile not too > intrusive, so it shouldn't need to be overridden in most cases... Thank you, but the docs suggested to me that it must be completely overridden, 100%, as in default vs custom is either/or. So I'll need details of what is "most cases" vs other cases, etc. >> If you want to override the built-in profiles, you need to create >> replacement files (e.g. profiles/default.preseed, >> profiles/default.*), though I would generally recommend providing >> additional profiles rather than overriding the default profiles. Okay but again, please point to docs that give a detailed explanation of how custom and default profiles interact. > The custom.preseed file may not be loaded till later in the process; it > depends on which questions you're thinking are answered by it. There is > a question during the install that asks which simple-cdd profiles to > load; any pquestions asked before that obviously can't be preseeded. Okay and I see why you need my exact files and I will send them. But first please tell me this: is my objective of a 100% non-interactive QEMU image of a Debian installer possible with simple-cdd or will there always be some requirement for user interaction? > Where do you expect $default_desktop to be defined? That was essentially the question I was asking you in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=958276 but I think it does not matter because that error was caused by me removing the default profiles. I did not expect to ever see $default_desktop and I do not want my installer to require a desktop, and it does not require any GUI or UI because it must require no user interaction. > Are you running from ~ or running from ~/my-simple-cdd ? >From ~/my-simple-cdd when I got this bug. > you can just specify one of the profiles in > /usr/share/simple-cdd/profiles, preferably in a directory that does not > contain any "profiles" directory: That was the opposite of what I am trying to test. I am asking you to please recommend a default set of profile files I can download, put into ~/my-simple-cdd/profiles, and run with `build-simple-cdd --profiles thatone` so that I can test if the problem is my specific profiles files, or the process of loading a custom profile. Once I understand correct usage, and I test running with a custom profile set (in ~/my-simple-cdd/profiles) *then* any errors I have must be from my profile files, and I will send those here. The suggestion you gave uses profiles in /usr/share/simple-cdd/profiles, that are pre-loaded/included profiles, not custom ones, and custom is what I want to test. > simple-cdd --profiles router,x-basic > If that's not working, then there's definitely a bug in simple-cdd. Right and that does build an installer. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a bug in simple-cdd because this usage is different from what I am using, and the result is different from my desired result. So although this does not prove that simple-cdd has a bug, it does not prove that `build-simple-cdd --profiles custom` does not have a bug. I appreciate you going through this with me at this level of detail. Maybe this is not a bug, but simply an incorrect understanding of what simple-cdd can do, or most likely my incorrect understanding of how to use it. But I've read every doc on the subject and this usage is what was made clear to me, so at a minimum I hope to help illuminate issues with the doc.
