[Freedombox-discuss] qemu squeeze armel image

[Philip Hands]

On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:00:40 +0200, bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org wrote:
...
> > I can host that if people find it useful, although if that's a a vanilla
> > install, I'd think it might be better to publish the recipe somehow
> > (with as much of the install automated as possible) as that will give us
> > a quicker download, and will give us a starting point on which to build
> > a fully automated install, which is almost certainly going to be useful
> > at some point.
> 
> Good point, I'll publish on the wiki the way to create such an image. I'll
> try to put some preseeding too in the process, even if it won't be
> possible to preseed stuff like the language.

Well, one approach is to preseed most stuff, and leave debconf to ask
that question.  Another is to use something like ubuntu's oem-config
which allows one to re-ask such questions on first boot.  Finally, you
can simply tell people how to preseed their favoured locale settings as
well (it is of course possible, but as you're hinting, not something
that one can usefully set globally)

I suppose we could add something to auto-detect it somehow -- what do
people need locale's for BTW?  If the main UI is a web interface, we
might be able to just use the language settings from their browser,
although I'd imagine there is some problem with that.

> That's an interesting starting point though, how would this automated
> installation be done..? Preseeding could help, but we'd still need to have
> some user input like for setting up the language. Or maybe provide a
> default installed system image, and then the user would change some of the
> settings we couldn't define during the build of this image (like
> language).

It's about time I updated my auto-install stuff to work well with
squeeze, so I'll see if I can get something that creates the images
we're talking about, and will post info on the wiki once I'm done.

> > Not that I'm trying to discourage you, as an image for everyone to work
> > From might well be useful, and would provide a point of comparison for
> > anyone subsequently coming up with auto-install stuff.
> 
> Yeah, I guess both are usefull, the documentation/preseeding for automated
> installation/build tests, and prebuild images for people that want to work
> on higher level stuffs, without spending too much time by installing a
> system.
> 
> > So, send me a URL (and provide a GPG signature for the image) and I'll
> > publish both for you.
> 
> Well, that's the point, if I had a URL, I would have send it here :)

Ah, I was assuming you just didn't have the bandwidth, but could afford
one download.  Never mind, seems like you have it covered.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND
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