On Wed 10 Jan 2018 at 11:34:57 (+0000), Steve McIntyre wrote: > hosack...@gmail.com wrote: > > > >This is a bug report. I tried to use the reporting system, but it did not > >seem to be appropriate. So, I will give a narrative: > > > >This is what happened. > >I decided to install Debian on my small machine (Asus eeePC 900A, 1GB > >ram, 4GB storage). So I selected debian-9.3.0-i386-xfce-CD-1.iso and > >put it onto a flash memory stick. Installation went ok, but > >later on when I did "apt install gcc", the installation program > >requested the insertion of the installation disk in the drive > >/media/cdrom. Why? > > > >Examination. > >The /etc/apt/sources.list file had "deb: cdrom:[<installation>..." as > >the first entry, and was not commented out. My installation medium > >was wrong! > > > >Solution. > >Comment out "deb: cdrom:[<installation>..." in sources.list. > > > >Discussion. > >There are 2 problems: > >(1) Installation should not put the installation medium in the > >sources.list, at least not without asking the user, > >since the medium may be reused. > > This is a long-standing design decision that probably merits > re-examination, yes. The current logic assumes: > > * if you've used a "netinst" to install, then you won't want to use > it again later, so it will be used by d-i then commented out later. > > * if you've used a bigger (set of) image(s), then you most likely > will want to use this again in the future. This is to support > people using CD/DVD media sets for installations. We should > probably drop this for the single-CD xfce media at least.
That sounds sensible … > >(2) Installation should keep track of the installation medium; > >if necessary by asking the user. > > (2) reflects a wider problem: Debian has a legacy of > >assuming CD or DVD installation. But much is now done by > >flash memory sticks. Debian should change to reflect this. > >For example, the iso file names might be "large" (or "full") > >or "small" (or "base"), not "DVD" or "CD". References > >to "CD" or "DVD" should be replaced by reference to the > >"installation medium", unless "CD" is actually necessary. Etc. > > Agreed, yes. The way we use USB media in the installer at the moment > is to make them appear just like CDs. That works, but leads to odd > messages. We should fix up those messages, at the very least. It's on > my list... … but you can almost never win at this game because there'll always be someone who assumes or wants the opposite. eg they do a netinst but leave out a package necessary to get connected to the internet after they reboot; or they install from a full DVD but then decide their connectivity is good enough to rely instead entirely on the internet. Perhaps /etc/apt/sources.list could have a one-line pointer to a text file that explained the options available and how to achieve them. Cheers, David.
