1

During a Debian pre-seed automated installation onto a VM, the output is particularly... well, quiet. There's no transparency into the progress of things, or to even see the Aptitude output during the software installation process - just basic, single-line progress bars.

Is there a way to enable more verbose output during a pre-seeded debian installation?

Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED
  • 157
  • 3
  • 12

2 Answers2

2

Enter the Key+Combo Alt+Left or Alt+Right and you will eventually end up at an tty where the Log is Printed. Alt+F1-7 should also Work. I don't know which tty is assigned to which Function. But I think Alt+Left once will Switch to the Log-Output. And all other tty's can be Enabled via Enter to gain a Shell.

  • This is a debian preseed environment, so typing anything is strictly off-limits since it's an automated install. – Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED Feb 01 '22 at 02:05
  • 1
    I just tried it, because i was adding an remote-bash Script in my preseed for additional user-creation with pw-hash and ssh-pubkey... It doesn't matter if you switch the Consoles during Setup. It won't change the outcome in any way. "Hold Alt + two or three Times Left"... –  Feb 01 '22 at 02:17
  • Just checked for `chvt`, it's not shipped to use it with an early_command... –  Feb 01 '22 at 02:44
0

The most useful methods I've found for getting more verbose details are:

  • Add DEBCONF_DEBUG=5 to your kernel command line to get a lot more detail about what the installer itself is doing
  • For early_command/late_command scripts you can run things with the log-output command to send the output of the script to syslog (which will make it appear in the logs on the console)
  • For really unattended installs where you can't get to the console, you can use log_host=<ip-address> on the kernel command line to send the installers logs to a syslog server
Jason Kohles
  • 190
  • 5