A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel +installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now, +I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem +of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a +conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like +this: + +
+ +This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the +tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without +any output what so ever. + +Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic +package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without +any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it +happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel +when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line +printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using +code like this: + ++export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive +tasksel --new-install +
+ ++export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive +cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')" +$cmd +
The content of $cmd is typically something like "aptitude -q +--without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install +~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired +~pimportant", which will install the gnome desktop task, the +laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and +important, just like tasksel would have done it during +installation.
+ +A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to +install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases +like this.
+ +