Petter Reinholdtsen

How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer
26th September 2014

The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project provide a Linux solution for schools, including a powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the future. The current status can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer, but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a recipe on how to get the installation limping along.

First, download the test ISO via ftp, http or rsync (use ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso). The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to install with some tweaking.

When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run

nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install

and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install due to a known bug in eatmydata.

When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit your need.

If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two days.

I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch provided in bug #702711. The rest have proper fixes in unstable.

I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.

Tags: debian, debian edu, english.

Created by Chronicle v4.6