On Fri 04 Dec 2020 at 22:56:41 +1100, David wrote: > 2) And you probably need at least N=2 on an older machine. > If there is sufficient RAM, the installer offers to load itself > into RAM which frees up the partition where the iso is, so that it can > be overwritten by the new install. If the RAM is insufficient this is > not possible, so the partition where the iso is must be specified > "do not use" because it is mounted and in use by the installer, so > the new install must be done into another partition. I would > deal with this by converting our installer boot partition to a /boot > partition manually after the install is complete and rebooted > into the new partition.
I have been using the hd-media installation method with preseeding at priority-high for many years and never encountered this. It turns out it was introduced as a consequence of #868900: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=868900 The default for iso-scan/copy_iso_to_ram is false, which is why I never saw it. Thanks for drawing the option to our attention. Choosing "true" doesn't suit me because hd-media is then unmounted. All the files I use during an installation, including the critical preseed.cfg, then become unavailable. > 3) The grub.cfg I used was > > menuentry 'Debian Installer' { > insmod part_msdos > insmod ext4 > set root='(hd0,msdos1)' > linux /vmlinuz priority=medium > initrd /initrd.gz > } My grub.cfg is menuentry 'Debian Installer' { linux /boot/vmlinuz priority=medium initrd /boot/initrd.gz } I think this would make "set root='(hd0,msdos1)'" superfluous. I wonder whether the other two directives are defaults for GRUB? -- Brian.
