rand(topic**2)

So, a new rule. If you blog about something related to installing with the debian-installer, you must also file an installation report. Otherwise, I will mock you. ;-) Just assume the d-i team is getting 1 beer per successful installation report (corporate sponsors are welcome).

Today was spent messing with boot-loaders and getting a beta3 update released. Only 2.5 arches to go.. The ports status page is showing a lot of yellow and green.

Gratifying thing a day or so ago: a user came in with a pcmcia cdrom, and while d-i didn't support it in the published images, I was able to build him a 3 mb iso image that had the necessary stuff to see it. All with a couple lines of changes in the udebs lists.

I would like to drop the broken debian-installer-demo package, unfortunatly this otherwise useless package is a sentinel package, used to let the autobuilders know they need to autobuild d-i. That process also builds the installation images, but the autobuilders don't track BYHAND tarballs. The only idea I have for a sentinal package to replace it would be a debian-installer-manual. Problem is, while the manual is arch specific and is indeed built already, it would really be more useful to include manuals for all arches in such a deb. I may compromise and only include the current arch, anyway. It seems better than adding a debian-installer-hello-world. The only other idea I've had is a debian-installer-undo package but installing windows or macos from inside Debian is not something I know how to do.

I tried to get my tickets to Brazil for debconf4, but the credit card is not cooperating. Will have to call the bank tomorrow.