Package: cloud.debian.org
Version: *

Hi, I am interested in running Debian sid unstable in a Vagrant vm, in
order to bundle deb ports. I tried a few different ways to do this, but I
think I need some assistance to get to this goal. Similar to the buster v10
box on Vagrant Cloud, it would be helpful if sid were published there as
well.

First, I tried upgrading from a buster stable vm to sid. Unfortunately,
this resulted in a grub warning and the box becomes unbootable at that
point.

Next, I tried packing my own sid box with packer, as I have had luck with
other versions of Debian in the past. Here, the default installer options
like LVM and encrypted home partitions and UUID device loading, cause the
box to have boot problems. Especially if the packer .BOX output is then fed
through a `vagrant up` instance that further customizes the VM with
`vagrant package` and that second output is run through `vagrant up`.

With help around GitHub packer examples, I cobbled together a partial vm
configuration:

https://github.com/mcandre/packer-templates/tree/issue-355/debian

If you checkout the "issue-355" branch, and change directory to "debian/",
then you should be able to try out this configuration with "make
debian-sid-amd64-virtualbox.box". I'm sure the Debian project has their own
setup scripts for Vagrant Cloud, but I thought I'd show my work here for
context.

One third of the time, sid installation gets stuck on a 100% blue screen.
Not sure if installation is continuing in the background or what. As a
workaround, I keep retrying sid installation.

Another third of the time, sid installation complains that a mirror is
unable to download one of the setup files. Now, I have seen occasional
network issues on different servers. A year ago, I switched to a fiber ISP
and the upload speed seemed to cause Vagrant Cloud to glitch out. Perhaps
one or more Debian mirrors has trouble keeping up with 1Gbps clients? I
dunno. Anyway, as a workaround, I keep retrying sid installation.

The final third of the time, sid installation shows a red screen towards
the end of base installation. The screen says to retry installation (har
har), and to check /var/log/syslog for more detail.

When I exit the installer and use a shell to tail this file, then I see two
lines that stand out:

base-installer: error: exiting on error base-installer/debootstrap-failed
main-menu[203]: WARNING **: Configuring 'bootstrap-base' failed with error
code 30

Not really sure what this means. At this point, I can only list more
configuration details, in case that helps to diagnose the root cause.

* Packer 1.4.0
* VirtualBox 5.2.24
* macOS 10.14.5

-- 
Cheers,
Andrew

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