apt-get failures -- blah!

[Chad Walstrom]

I have an installation failure in rcS_fai that has been bugging me for
some time.  It happens when apt cannot find an install candidate for a
listed package.  Apt fails out and FAI continues on as if nothing
happened.  Of course, we do have a base install from which to recover,
but it's often easiest to look back at the log files and find out which
package failed to remove it.  Then go back and restart the computer to
rerun rcS_fai.

To make the process a little easier, I changed the mounted disk check to
continue on if the mirror is already mounted instead of fail.  I then
simply rerun rcS_fai from the shell on on the workstation.  Repeat until
I get a successful install.

What I'd like to know is what can we do to make apt-get failures less
damaging to the install process.  How can we insert a bit more
fault-tolerance to the process so that we can get a "mostly-installed"
system instead of a "base" system?  Do we need to patch apt to provide
the option to continue on in these cases?  Or, should we write a helper
app that breaks the package list into smaller useable chunks?  If we run
into a failure, it only affects those in packages in the smaller chunk.

Feedback?

I'm willing to help develop this, as my job will be made much easier if
we can get a solution to this. ;-)

Thanks,
Chad Walstrom <chewie at debian.org>

-- 
Chad C. Walstrom <chad at ima.umn.edu>             http://www.ima.umn.edu
Assistant Systems Manager, IMA                  Phone: 612-624-4353
                                                Fax: 612-626-7370