debootstrap failing ( part of fai )

[Satyen Sheth]

On 12/3/05, Henning Sprang <henning_sprang at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 16:16 -0800, Satyen Sheth wrote:
> > [...]
> > Problem:
> >
> > - debootstrap fails since it can't find the file 'Release'
> >
> > Options used for debmirror:
> >
> > allopt="$debug --ignore-missing-release --ignore-release-gpg --passive
> > --getcontents --nosource --arch=$arch --ignore=disks-$arch/ --verbose
> > --md5sums"
> >
> >
> > * debootstrap works when you point to a mirror (not local - ie
> > https.us.debian.org)
> >
> >
> > -I've also tried to create the mirror _without_ the
> > '--ignore-missing-release --ignore-release-gpg' flags and fai-setup
> > fails with the same message
> > -I've also tried to use 'debmirror < arch targetdir> .... fails with
> > same error cited.
> > -under my target dir 'debmirror' there is a directory '.temp' the
> > Release and Release.gpg files are sync'ed in there. ( this would be
> > all of the meta data )
> >   I believe.
> > [...]
>
> It seems at least obvious that something's wrong with your mirror.
> I remember debmirror being a bit tricky. I am not a real debmirror
> expert, but to be able to say more about your problem, some questions:
>
> - are there any error messages when running debmirror?
> - can you use your local mirror on an installed machine, by putting it
> in the /etc/apt/sources.list and installing some packages from it?
> - did you really do exactly what is described in "man debmirror"?
> - I am using the mkdebmirror helper script that comes with FAI
> successfully - did you try that?
>
> Henning
>


Hi I tried two things which worked.. sort of:

1. use mkedebmirror with timeout parameter for debmirror.  This param
is not included in the 'mkdebmirror' script.  Using the timeout = 1800
secs worked!  As expected it got ALL the pkgs from my local mirror @
berkeley University.  Execution time was over 13 hours.  I have ~
1.2Kbps connection.  This is not a real good solution for me as I
don't need ALL the pkgs.

2. Per Thomas Lange's suggestion I tried fai-mirror.  This worked
REALLY well as it was fast.  Running 'fai-setup -v' now fails with

output of 'fai-setup -v'
------------------------------

....

I: Validating adduser
I: Retrieving apt
I: Validating apt
I: Retrieving apt-utils
I: Validating apt-utils
E: Couldn't download aptitude

This is MUCH further than I had ever gone in the setup process.



Two questions:

1. why was aptitude not downloaded. Maybe it wasn't defined in one of
the classes?

So I defined it in: /usr/local/share/fai/package_config/DEFAULT (shown below)

+------------------------------------------
egress:/usr/local/share/fai/package_config# cat DEFAULT
PACKAGES install I386
memtest86+
kernel-image-2.4-386

PACKAGES aptitude DHCPC
dhcp3-client

PACKAGES aptitude GRUB
grub lilo-

PACKAGES aptitude LILO
lilo grub-

PACKAGES aptitude-r GERMAN
german

PACKAGES aptitude-r FAISERVER
fai fai-kernels mknbi dhcp3-server tftpd-hpa
rsh-server wget syslinux debmirror tcpdump aptitude
+------------------------------------------

Is this the right place?  I think not, as I removed aptcache, dists,
pool and reran fai-mirror, here is the command issued.

'fai-mirror -v -cDEFAULT /usr/local/share/files/scratch/debmirror/'

This fails to build a proper mirror, - nothing in pool directory -

so now issue the same command without the '-c' flag ( as well as
removing dists/pool dirs )
'fai-mirror -v /usr/local/share/files/scratch/debmirror/'

End result, pkg 'aptitude' is not downloaded.  So I'm not correctly
specifying where to include extra pkgs that I want included.

Should extra pkgs that I want installed be in defined somewhere in fai
class definitions or in  make-fai-nfsroot?

-thanks
seth