Package: cdimage.debian.org Severity: wishlist Installing Debian when debootstrap isn't available can be extremely inconvenient, because the only alternative is the installer, which is: - slow - requires booting the media - primarily aimed for stable - inflexible and difficult to customize and/or automate
A better alternative in such situations is using debootstrapped tarballs, which can be simply unpacked into a suitable mountpoint and further configured (similar to Gentoo's stage3 tarballs). It should also be faster as an installation method than using the Debian Installer. Generating them can be quite straightforward, and doesn't even require root privileges: $ cdebootstrap --foreign --arch=ARCH [...] $ tar [...] Usecases: - VM provisioning - automated installs, possibly handing over to a configuration management system - rescue environments - manual installation from an existing non-Debian OS - custom setups unsupported by the Debian Installer Generally, I don't think the Debian Installer is a good idea in such cases, and it's best left for interactive installation. Please consider distributing Debian in this manner. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: https://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
