(01-14-2020, 09:14 PM)ab1jx Wrote: This is fun, I like it because it uses debootstrap and you potentially end up with a cutting-edge system. But I wonder if it's possible to toughen it so it drops breadcrumbs and checks for those as it goes along. For those of us with unreliable networks where everything isn't likely to get done at once. I got up to choosing software, lxde, web server, etc, then everything went dead. Restarted and it went back and partitioned the SD again, got up to about the same place and died again. My new SD boots to a very basic system with no network. Since I think I can muddle through by doing dpkg -i downloaded debs on usb devices until I get network I'll probably continue.
But if it could recognize waypoints from a partial install like make does it would save time for those of us with imperfect networks. Could these use make?
I decided to give it one more shot and it got through the downloads without stopping, now it's installing. A newer than I've ever seen Debian on my first ever new laptop, always bought fixer-uppers before. 50% done, unpacking.
There's nothing automatic but there is some support in the script for taking things a step at a time so it might be worth taking a look the internal functions.
Each of the functions starting with do_ can be run on its own by putting it on the command line (do_all is just the default). For example if the installer failed during the installation of the GUI desktop then I think you can do something like: ./install-debian BLKDEV=... do_mount do_tasksel do_umount (and I think will preserve the cache of any binaries fetched during the previous task selection).
Naturally the other trick is to simply not select any additional software and then run tasksel by hand from within the newly install distro.
(01-14-2020, 06:50 PM)ThatGeoGuy Wrote: I'm trying to figure out what the rough edges would be, but not having encryption support on a laptop is a pretty big one for me.I assume by default most of the inputs work, and WiFi / Bluetooth is in good shape? If so, it doesn't seem too limited in comparison to default debian, so I'll take your word for it. My plan is to avoid most DEs anyways, and probably stick to awesomewm/sway/i3 anyways. So assuming the basics are working, I don't think my needs are too complex
WiFi works but I'm not using (nor testing) bluetooth at the moment. I have seen some people have had difficulty making it work (check out the mainline kernel thread for clues... IIRC there was something about manually supplying a MAC address).
To be clear I am using a distro built by (a very old version) of the installer as my only OS on the PBP. It's robust and I'm now using PBP to build it's own kernel and bootloaders.
Having said that I'm not spending quite as much time on PBP as I might like... because I have a PineTime too ;-) .