Hi,

Ralph Ronnquist writes:

> golinux@??? wrote on 2020-03-23 03:57:
>> On 2020-03-22 06:35, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote:
>>>
>>> The server ISO worked fine for an air-gapped install on non-UEFI
>>> hardware. I expect it to fail installing GRUB on UEFI hardware because
>>> the grub-efi-amd64 package (and its dependencies?) are not included.
>>>
>>> I have since stumbled across
>>>
>>> 1. The *_netinstall.iso (~300 M) installs a minimal base system then
>>> downloads additional packages from the Devuan repositories during the
>>> installation process. Not to be used for offline installs.
>>>
>>> in the Devuan Beowulf Install Guide[1]. I guess the guide is serious
>>> about the netinstall image *not* to be used for offline installs.
>>>
>>> [1]:
>>> https://beta.devuan.org/os/documentation/install-guides/beowulf/install-devuan
>>>
>>> Fair enough but it deviates from, oh, a decade or so of previous
>>> experience with Debian and Devuan netinst ISO image. There was some
>>> mention in the Devuan meeting notes for 2020-03-19 (cannot find it in
>>> the devuan-dev ML archives yet) about perhaps "rectifying" this.

>> The advice not to use the netinstall for offline installs is because
>> issues were reported that the result of such an install was incomplete
>> and not fully functional functional. When they are tracked down and
>> corrected, that warning will be removed. This is a BETA and finding
>> problems like that is the whole point, isn't it? ;)

It is and I am not complaining. Just a bit thrown off by the observed
behaviour being different from long time experience :-)

> Yes, I made the netinstall solely for network based installation, but with
> complete on-media installation software, which is primarily how it differs from
> mini.iso. Whe expanded to also carry a dependency-complete pool for a "minimal"
> installation, it ends up almost CD size, and I thought one may as well use the
> server (aka cd1) ISO instead.
>
> Obviously this (lack of) thought of mine isn't well aligned with community
> expectation. Hopefully I've learnt better for the next drop.

Actually, I don't think making a network connection a *hard* requirement
for the netinstall image is a bad thing. It just has to be documented
very clearly in the release notes.

# I very, very vaguely recall being surprised you could Debian's netinst
# without a network connection :-)

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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