Debian 10 based automated product CD installation breaking using packer 1.5.4

[Jaikumar Sharma]

Hi,

We have just upgraded our product to Debian 10. Pressed is part of product ISO, we are using virtualbox-iso builder to install and export it as OVA.

Build platform : Debian 9.x (64 bit)

Virtualbox version: 5.1.8

Packer version : 1.5.4.

It starts the installation of the ISO into VM (I can use VNC viewer to check the installation progress) but as soon as 'late_commd' from the preseed is run to install the packages it fails and shows the messsge

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apt configuration problem

"An attempt to configure apt to install additional packages from the CD failed"

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If I install the ISO manually in the VM then there are no issues, it is installed and VM boots succesfully.

I've searched mailing list archives and googled it but no concrete answer i've come across so far..

Does somebody know what may be the real cause behind this? Or i'm missing something obivious.

Thank you!

Jaikumar

[dragon788]

Are you trying to use a fat installation ISO and not use the internet mirrors for some reason?

I'd highly suggest checking out the github.com/chef/bento and github.com/boxcutter/debian repositories for some great example preseed files.

[Jaikumar Sharma]

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 2:47:15 AM UTC+5:30, dragon788 wrote:

Are you trying to use a fat installation ISO and not use the internet mirrors for some reason?

Thanks for response dragon788! 

In fact, we have in-house debian reposository which we use to store to customized debian packages for our product, we deliver our product to our customers  in form of ISO as well as OVA. We do not use external debian repositories but we pull security updates from official debian repositories regularly. Customized preseed is also part of product ISO. I'm not sure if we have to have preseed seperate from product ISO and pull it at runtime to generate OVA?

I'd highly suggest checking out the github.com/chef/bento and github.com/boxcutter/debian repositories for some great example preseed files.

Thanks, will have a look into! 

[dragon788]

You should be able to specify your internal hosts as the exclusive Debian apt source as well as the allowed mirror(s) so you don't necessarily need to build a large ISO, you can either embed the tiny preseed file into a custom ISO and/or pass it as a boot argument which is what Packer does.

I've used Packer quite a bit in the past to vet out my preseed before building an ISO or USB drive for distribution purposes.