This page is obsolete and kept only for historical purposes. Base-config is no longer used in D-I.
In DebianSarge and earlier, the base-config package was used to perform various tasks in the second stage of the installer. This was fiddly and had a number of practical problems, not least considerable code and question duplication from various bits of DebianInstaller proper. Thus, we're getting rid of it and moving to a single-stage installer. (As a side-effect or possibly a prerequisite of this, we've got a nice progress bar for the installation of all the packages that were formerly installed in the second stage.) This page tracks the status of this task, starting with http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/12/msg00259.html and followups.
Initial rollout:
- preseed 1.11 and base-installer 1.40 need to be reviewed and uploaded. These changes will keep "second stage" preseeding working.
done
- tasksel 2.37 and debconf 1.4.62 need to get to testing so they're available for use from regular d-i installs.
done
- Then pkgsel needs to be uploaded.
done
- Then prebaseconfig 1.14 can be uploaded, and base-config will no longer be run.
done
- New localechooser, debian-installer-utils and pkgsel uploads needed to support localization.
done
- All the different task installs will need to be thoroughly tested. Especially the desktop task. Also, localized installs, and preseeded installs will need to be tested. The chances that all these changes broke something is rather high.
all servers + standard reported ok
- Testing also needs to be done for the different frontends, including text.
newt and gtk frontends are OK
- preseed and other documentation will need to be updated to not talk about base-config and "first stage"/"second stage".
done
- network-console can be simplified as it no longer needs to set up for base-config over SSH; the deb can be removed as that only takes care of cleaning up the installer user at the end of base-config.
done
Edge cases:
- pkgsel needs to have some code added to propagate a couple of debconf variables that debs use, or we need to find a better way to communicate this info.
done for at least most variables
- I have a suspicion that user-setup will need to create the non-root user before tasksel runs and that we'll see subtle (or not) breakage when exim4, etc are installed before that user is present.
hasn't been a problem so far
- Something needs to be done about localization-config, which hooks in via base-config still. TODO!
- Something needs to be done about debian-edu-config, which does likewise. The debian-edu people should be pinged. TODO!
- If anyone cares about ppp installs, something will need to be added to d-i to allow them. The code that did support them is dead in base-config.
- apt-setup has a few corner cases that it does not support that were supported by the old system. These include:
- http proxy asking for installs from only CD w/o choose-mirror (for security sources)
- multi-cd support
- debconf-apt-progress needs to have CD changing support added
- cdebconf crashes on PURGE command from popularity-contest
fixed
and the bug that let the PURGE through is fixed in pkgsel now
xserver-xorg's mode configuration question breaks under pkgsel
done in 6.9.0.dfsg.1-1, in testing
- localechooser must set up utf-8 locales for all languages; if d-i uses utf-8 and the installed system does not, there will be mojibake or similar during tasksel
Final cleanup:
- The only thing left of value in base-config at this point is the validlocale program, which localechooser uses in its prebaseconfig script. If localechooser cannot be modified to run without this program, we will need to move it to somewhere else so base-config can be removed. Perhaps the locales package would be a good place to put validlocale?
done in locales 2.3.5-10, not yet in testing
also in belocs-locales-bin 2.3.5-3
- remove base-config from archive once these reach testing
bug filed against ftp.debian.org for removal
- current plan is to wait until after the next d-i beta and remove base-config.
- And rename prebaseconfig to something that makes a bit more sense in the new system, such as "finish-install".
- Renamed package will need to clear incoming, then all udebs that use it will need to be updated to rename their debconf templates and prebaseconfig hooks.
done (haven't checked udebs built out of tree)
- At least one udeb depends on prebaseconfig, there is a provide for now.
- bug filed on debian-edu-install for this
- prebaseconfig will need to be removed from unstable/testing when finish-install enters, otherwise some stuff might be run twice..
done
- finish-install should eventually drop support for the prebaseconfig hooks. There's also some stuff in base-installer that needs to drop prebaseconfig hooks eventually.
- Renamed package will need to clear incoming, then all udebs that use it will need to be updated to rename their debconf templates and prebaseconfig hooks.