BabelBox: automated DebianInstaller testing and demo machine

Principles

Babelbox is a system designed to show the automation capabilities of the Debian Installer.

It also focuses on the high number and the quality of translations currently available for the installer. As is, it is well suited for a living demo on a booth in an expo or any other event.

The original ["DebianInstaller/BabelBox"] setup is based on the netboot installation method and requires a separate server besides the actual demo machine. This alternative setup is based on the hd-media installation method and can be run off a single machine, even without networking.

For this setup using a single "clean" harddisk is recommended. A setup using two harddisks is also possible but will need some modifications in the preseed file and scripts.

Setting up the demo machine

The demo machine will be set up for two multi-boot systems:

Installing the controlling system

Perform a basic installation using your preferred installation method. When you get to partitioning, exit to the main menu and use fdisk to partition the disk as follows:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1         486     3903763+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2             487         548      498015   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3             549         899     2819629    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda4             900        4998    32925217+  83  Linux

The idea here is to create a first partition to hold the controlling system and to leave the third (extended) partition free for the demo system. The fourth primary partition is just to fill up the harddisk so that formatting for the demo system will not take unnecessary long. Good guidelines for size are 4 GB for the controlling system and 2.5 to 3 GB for the demo system.

After you finish partitioning using fdisk, return to the installation menu and restart partman. Use the manual partitioning option to select the first partition for the root file system for the controlling system. Install the system with only the "Standard" task. Install GRUB into the MBR of the disk.

Setting up the controlling system to run Babelbox

Everything needed to run the demo will be placed in /srv on the controlling system.

Please take some time to look over the contents of the files in the /srv/babelbox directory that should now have been created.

Add the following at the end of /boot/grub/menu.lst:

title           Babelbox install
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /srv/vmlinuz video=vesa:ywrap,mtrr vga=788 debconf/priority=critical console-keymaps-at/keymap=us preseed/file=/hd-media/srv/babelbox/preseed.cfg debian-installer/locale=en
initrd          /srv/initrd.gz
savedefault
boot

title           Babelbox demo
root            (hd0,4)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1-686 root=/dev/hda5 ro quiet
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-1-686
savedefault
boot

Now there's a few things left to do.