Recovering d-i logs
debian-installer
Historically the debian-installer (d-i) or netinstall is the default lightweight installer for Debian and other Debian-based distros, having support for all the main architectures the distribution supports.
Starting with upstream Ubuntu 20.10 this tool got deprecated, making the integration of such installer a Trisquel internal project, this guide will be of help recover the log to debug its behavior in order to identify issues.
Requirements
Via network - TFTP
Whether you use or test the d-i on a metal or virtual machine, you require 2 machines on the same network for the log been able to recover it.
- a physical or virtual network
- machine A, to install using d-i
- IP: any of the same network.
- machine B, already running trisquel
- IP: e.g. 192.168.1.10
Setup machine B as tftp server
As TFTP is the only tool shipped on the busybox environment available on the debian-installer.
Machine B, with a debian based system like trisquel, it's required to set it up as a tftp server
First install the tftp server with the following command,
sudo apt install tftpd-hpa
Then allow to create new files,
sudo sed -i 's|--secure|--secure --create|' /etc/default/tftpd-hpa
Fix permissions of the tftp directory,
sudo chown tftp:tftp /srv/tftp
Restart the server,
sudo systemctl restart tftpd-hpa
Backup logs from machine A
The d-i runs on tty1, where tty4 is showing the output syslog.
In order to backup the syslog, it's required to access any other tty, e.g. tty2 (Ctrl+Alt+F2)
Once on tty2 you require to go to the /var/log folder
cd /var/log/
tftp -l syslog -r syslog-remote 192.168.1.10 -p 69
where:
- l is the local file name
- r as the remote resulting name file
- machine B ip, 192.168.1.10
- p as the port to use default 69 *required
Once the syslog file is transferred it can easily be reviewed or copied using any other tools like ssh or rsync.
