Building my own Debian m68k NETINST ISO from Debian Installer kernel and initrd

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hello Carlos!

I have successfully built my own hd-media initrd and kernel image by cloning the
Debian Installer repository [1] and building them from a Debian install on Aranym
Linux aranym 5.15.0-2-m68k #1 Debian 5.15.5-1 (2021-11-26) m68k GNU/Linux

Building debian-installer yourself is rather easy. It can be built using sbuild like
any other package. You just need to make sure that build/config/common has the

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/linux

So, currently we're at 5.15.5-1 and that needs to be set in build/config/common.

So the d-i generated kernel and initrd modules target that version, that mismatch
the 2021-10-20 one (5.14.0-3). So in order to use them I need to build my own NETINST
ISO.

No, in order to use them, you must first make sure that the ABI version in build/config/common
is up to date. It won't work otherwise as the installer needs to know which kernel module
packages to use.

"Note that this does not create full debian ISO images; that is left to the
debian-cd package. As a shortcut, you can create a mini-ISO image, with
only the netboot initrd on it. make build_netboot will create a
dest/netboot/mini.iso, using isolinux. Any size initrd can be placed on
this ISO, which may be useful for testing."
I am not figuring out what would be the steps to use the debian-cd package (got here [3])
with my own hd-media and kernel images. Could someone let me know how to build a NETINST
ISO?

Building a full ISO is more difficult you actually need a local copy of the repository on
your build machine. However, you can build ISO images for any architectures on amd64, you
don't need to do it natively.

https://wiki.debian.org/PortsDocs/CreateDebianInstallerImages

You can omit the part which explains how to build debian-installer, you already have that,
you just have to unpack the debian-installer-images tarball to the correct location where
debian-cd can find it. You can also skip the bootloader part as all the necessary bootloaders
are in the Debian repositories.

Basically you need to do the following:

1. Create a local copy of the Debian Ports unstable mirror with reprepro
2. Checkout debian-cd from source
3. Edit CONF.sh and and easy-build.sh to suit your needs (see my attached variants)
4. run ./easy-build.sh NETINST m68k

PS: Sorry for not having updated the hd-media images yet. I got sick last month and work
kept on piling. I hope to do it over the Christmas holidays.

Adrian

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Carlos!

After running these steps I run into some problems. It looks like when running
sort_deps it just doesn't find any packages. I am attaching a log of the output,
with my configuration files as well.
E: The repository 'file:/srv/debian-m68k-archive sid Release' is not signed.
1. In CONF.sh, I disabled the 'unreleased' repository, as it was just sid was
retrieved by reprepro. I used [1] as base for the configuration, replacing sparc64
for m68k.

You should include "unreleased" though.

2. In easy-build.sh, I changed the CODENAME and DI_CODENAME from 'bookwork' to 'sid'.

Huh, I'm pretty sure it was set to "sid" in my configuration.

Am I missing something here?

Yes, the signing key.

FWIW, including firmware should now work as well since "contrib" and "non-free" were
recently added for arch:all packages in Debian Ports.

Adrian

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hello Carlos!

Sadly, there is no mention to the keyring package in [1] nor the signing
process. The documentation is missing several points. First, the sample
config files to download at [2] do not include Unreleased repo, so I

The repository is already signed. You just need to get the repo from the remote
server onto your local hard disk, including the signed Release and Packages files.

There is no need to create your own Release file or sign it, so I'm not sure what
you are trying to achieve. You could also use rsync for clowning the mirror but
then you would have to exclude the other architectures.

Adrian

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

From the git history, it looks like nativehd is an old image type that is only being used at all
on m68k but not on the other architectures. I will perform a test installer build and check what's
actually in the initrd.

OK, so "nativehd" is basically a hard-disk based network installer while "hd-media"
is a hard-disk based CD-ROM installer, see [1].

Now, since we also have a "netboot" installer, I wonder whether we still need the
"nativehd" installer.

Adrian

[1] https://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/m68k/ch05s01.html.en

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Carlos!

I have finally found the time to look at hd-media images.

pata-modules-${kernel:Version}
fat-modules-${kernel:Version}
ext4-modules-${kernel:Version}
affs-modules-${kernel:Version}
loop-modules-${kernel:Version}
nic-modules-${kernel:Version}

I just wanted to update this and now I'm wondering whether we actually still need the "nativehd"
media type or whether we can just merge it with the "hd-media" type which is what's being used
on the other architectures.

From the git history, it looks like nativehd is an old image type that is only being used at all

on m68k but not on the other architectures. I will perform a test installer build and check what's
actually in the initrd.

Did you use the "hd-media" or the "nativehd" image for your tests?

Adrian