I couldn't find an end-to-end document online about this just bits and pieces here and there. Let me describe how to install Debian testing (wheezy) without a keyboard using an USB flash drive and ssh.

I've got an HP Microserver a month or so ago and this is the step by step of my second install. The first one was also keyboardless but didn't involve an USB flash drive to bootstrap. I've used tftpd and dhcp from my laptop, but forgot to capture the notes to make a blog post. Shame on me.

Here's what you need:

• A machine that will boot from USB. (HP Microserver comes with USB, Net and Disk boot order by default);
• USB flash drive (>=256MB, mine is 1GB);
• Machine with an ssh client to answer d-i's questions;
• A DHCP server in your network.

• Download the right debian installer boot image. Pay attention to "amd64" here since your architecture might be different. - http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/amd64/daily/hd-media/boot.img.gz

• Gunzip boot.img.gz.

• Transfer the image to the USB flash drive using dd if=boot.img of=/dev/<tokendev> . It will give you a few files in the USB flash drive. It's like you are mirroring what's in boot.img into it. Syslinux will be there.

• Download an ISO image - http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/amd64/iso-cd/. I've got netinst. Pay attention again to the architecture (amd64).

• Mount the USB flash drive.

• Copy the ISO image as is to the root directory of the USB flash drive. Using cp, yeah.

At this point you have all that you need to do a regular install using an USB flash drive and it's kinda of well documented. Well, we still need to change it to make it work without a keyboard and give you the ability to ssh into the installer.

Create a preseed.cfg in the root directory of the USB flash drive containing the following:

d-i netcfg/get_hostname string HOSTNAME
d-i netcfg/get_domain string DOMAIN
d-i anna/choose_modules string network-console
d-i network-console/password password INSERT_A_PASSWORD_HERE
d-i network-console/password-again password INSERT_A_PASSWORD_HERE

Edit syslinux.cfg in the root directory of the USB flash drive to look like this:

default netinst
prompt 0
timeout 5
label netinst
menu label netinst
 kernel linux
 append auto=true vga=normal file=/preseed.cfg initrd=initrd.gz priority=critical

• Umount the USB flash drive.

• Boot your new machine using the USB flash drive.

• d-i should do its thing and show and only stop to show you the screen pointing out that you can ssh as installer@<ip>.

• ssh from another machine as user installer to <ip>. Remember you've provided the password in the preseed.cfg above. You will be all set to install from there.

Let's make it clear: Your data is yours and in Google+ official announcement there's the following "You and over a billion others trust Google, and we don t take this lightly. In fact we ve focused on the user for over a decade: liberating data, ...". John Goerzen is wrong.

I can understand people having problems to use a product during its field trial and demanding features. I won't sit and watch people spreading FUD in bold before asking though.

Last, but not least, the following link is easily visible in the Settings and is also listed in the Help pages:
https://plus.google.com/settings/exportdata

We will celebrate Independency Day here in Brazil tomorrow (the year was 1822 for those into world history). I took the time to visit Belo Horizonte and meet a few googlers I don't see in a while. The cool part is that Rodrigo and his wife Ellen are also in town. We (me and Rodrigo) used to work in the same team at Google here in Belo, he's now living in Zurich.

It feels like it was yesterday that I was talking all things d-i with Felipe (faw) and Otavio during the last International Free Software Forum and discuss d-i without mentioning Frans Pop and Joey Hess at least a couple of times is definitely not the same thing.

Otavio convinced me to help and I promptly synced with him and Daniel Baumann to deliver an alpha quality syslinux-installer udeb; that was during debconf a bit after the forum, that they've all attended and I couldn't.

I feel I can't let it pass without a post, now that we've put out a notice about our loss. RIP Frans. :/

Dear lazyweb, I bought a Dell Mini 10 and am curious on how and if you use it for some sort of Debian development.

I would like to use it in an almost stateless setup (think installed, but usb stick would do) to browse things and have a few git/svn repositories to build small packages.

It seems there are some issues with the Xorg driver for this -- sbo. Thoughts?

Just uploaded some very rough slack roles in github to be used with slack. If you want to give a pull-only configuration management system a try, slack may be useful for you. It is also part of Debian for a while and may make Lenny, thanks to Andrew Pollock. He managed to package it before Alan Sundell allowed me to setup a project in code.google.com to keep it under a VCS.

The Debian Python Modules Team is discussing which DVCS to switch to from SVN. Ondrej Certik asked how to generate a list of commiters to the team s repository, so I looked at it and got this:
emilio@saturno:~/deb/python-modules$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
865 piotr
609 morph
598 kov
532 bzed
388 pox
302 arnau
253 certik
216 shlomme
212 malex
175 hertzog
140 nslater
130 kobold
123 nijel
121 kitterma
106 bernat
99 kibi
87 varun
83 stratus
81 nobse
81 netzwurm
78 azatoth
76 mca
73 dottedmag
70 jluebbe
68 zack
68 cgalisteo
61 speijnik
61 odd_bloke
60 rganesan
55 kumanna
52 werner
50 haas
48 mejo
45 ucko
43 pabs
42 stew
42 luciano
41 mithrandi
40 wardi
36 gudjon
35 jandd
34 smcv
34 brettp
32 jenner
31 davidvilla
31 aurel32
30 rousseau
30 mtaylor
28 thomasbl
26 lool
25 gaspa
25 ffm
24 adn
22 jmalonzo
21 santiago
21 appaji
18 goedson
17 toadstool
17 sto
17 awen
16 mlizaur
16 akumar
15 nacho
14 smr
14 hanska
13 tviehmann
13 norsetto
13 mbaldessari
12 stone
12 sharky
11 rainct
11 fabrizio
10 lash
9 rodrigogc
9 pcc
9 miriam
9 madduck
9 ftlerror
8 pere
8 crschmidt
7 ncommander
7 myon
7 abuss
6 jwilk
6 bdrung
6 atehwa
5 kcoyner
5 catlee
5 andyp
4 vt
4 ross
4 osrevolution
4 lamby
4 baby
3 sez
3 joss
3 geole
2 rustybear
2 edmonds
2 astraw
2 ana
1 twerner
1 tincho
1 pochu
1 danderson
As it s likely that the Python Applications Packaging Team will switch too to the same DVCS at the same time, here are the numbers for its repo:

emilio@saturno:~/deb/python-apps$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
401 nijel
288 piotr
235 gothicx
159 pochu
76 nslater
69 kumanna
68 rainct
66 gilir
63 certik
52 vdanjean
52 bzed
46 dottedmag
41 stani
39 varun
37 kitterma
36 morph
35 odd_bloke
29 pcc
29 gudjon
28 appaji
25 thomasbl
24 arnau
20 sc
20 andyp
18 jalet
15 gerardo
14 eike
14 ana
13 dfiloni
11 tklauser
10 ryanakca
10 nxvl
10 akumar
8 sez
8 baby
6 catlee
4 osrevolution
4 cody-somerville
2 mithrandi
2 cjsmo
1 nenolod
1 ffm
Here I m the 4th most committer And while I was on it, I thought I could do the same for the GNOME and GStreamer teams:
emilio@saturno:~/deb/pkg-gnome$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
5357 lool
2701 joss
1633 slomo
1164 kov
825 seb128
622 jordi
621 jdassen
574 manphiz
335 sjoerd
298 mlang
296 netsnipe
291 grm
255 ross
236 ari
203 pochu
198 ondrej
190 he
180 kilian
176 alanbach
170 ftlerror
148 nobse
112 marco
87 jak
84 samm
78 rfrancoise
75 oysteigi
73 jsogo
65 svena
65 otavio
55 duck
54 jcurbo
53 zorglub
53 rtp
49 wasabi
49 giskard
42 tagoh
42 kartikm
40 gpastore
34 brad
32 robtaylor
31 xaiki
30 stratus
30 daf
26 johannes
24 sander-m
21 kk
19 bubulle
16 arnau
15 dodji
12 mbanck
11 ruoso
11 fpeters
11 dedu
11 christine
10 cpm
7 ember
7 drew
7 debotux
6 tico
6 emil
6 bradsmith
5 robster
5 carlosliu
4 rotty
4 diegoe
3 biebl
2 thibaut
2 ejad
1 naoliv
1 huats
1 gilir

emilio@saturno:~/deb/pkg-gstreamer$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
891 lool
840 slomo
99 pnormand
69 sjoerd
27 seb128
21 manphiz
8 he
7 aquette
4 elmarco
1 fabian
Conclusions:
- Why do I have the full python-modules and pkg-gstreamer trees, if I have just one commit to DPMT, and don t even have commit access to the GStreamer team?
- If you don t want to seem like you have done less commits than you have actually done, don t change your alioth name when you become a DD (hint: pox-guest and piotr in python-modules are the same person)
- If the switch to a new VCS was based on a vote where you have one vote per commit, the top 3 commiters in pkg-gnome could win the vote if they chosed the same! For python-apps it s the 4 top commiters, and the 7 ones for python-modules. pkg-gstreamer is a bit special

The title of this post sucks, so that's up to you help me come with an alternative. It's also a bit sarcastic to remember that Debian is around for ages, Internet was smaller and poor, web wasn't a hit on the streets. Debian GNU/Linux is successful being an universal operating system. The question is: What's next? Lenny is the short term answer, but we can do more...

Do we really need to stop and discuss everything? Let's discuss everything yeah, but always do the fun work in parallel. Let's force ourselves to much higher standards.

Please remember that in many cases it isn't that easy to contribute with more than ideas when an alternative implementation requires additional privileges. Higher standards doesn't mean lock everything even more, no. It involves release the keys and make sure we can revert any changes that are clearly bad.

Flame a new installer idea (remember that? nobody does...) or initial code is easy. Give it some room and see what happens later... Ask yourself now: Do I have any privileges in Debian that may be forbidding people to help this project? Well, if you answered yes please post in your blog, come out on IRC and talk to others. Make sure you act as an useful bridge not as a blocker. If you don't have enough time, share your privilege with a secondary (hint: Maintain a package is a privilege).

I'm on vacation from my regular job and committed to help Debian full-time on the following tasks, if folks from the respective projects are interested, drop me a comment. Those who disagree, please keep working on whatever you are. It will be much more productive to us. There we go:

RC bugs - Do downgrades/removals from packages with less XXX users (as in popcon) now. Higher standards! I can't do that by myself since I have no access, if you are a release team member and is happy with that, we define the number and I prepare the list based on BTS.

Site - I would like to help the team working on the web site to split it in two. "current" and "legacy". current would be a very small one with content related to a few topics such as: Lenny, download, documentation, how to contribute and more. It would have a new UI (multiple languages yes), use XHTML or whatever the team feels ok. The key detail is that current would be www.debian.org on the day we release Lenny and after. current would have a link (or multiple links) to legacy website. People are free to cross-post current content to legacy website as well, but the best would be move from legacy to current.

I have some more ideas, but let's focus on a few things so I can deliver. release team and www, it's your turn now.

Just a little teaser from the bulk uploader output (more to come soon)...

INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:45,529 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:45,552 bulkload.py] cdebconf
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:47,253 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:47,281 bulkload.py] cdparanoia
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:48,962 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:48,986 bulkload.py] cdrdao
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:50,719 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:50,742 bulkload.py] cdrkit-doc
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:52,435 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:52,458 bulkload.py] cgilib
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:54,207 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:54,230 bulkload.py] check
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:55,977 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:56,000 bulkload.py] checksecurity
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:57,733 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:57,763 bulkload.py] cheese
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:59,673 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:13:59,696 bulkload.py] chkrootkit
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:01,411 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:01,433 bulkload.py] chrpath
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:03,141 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:03,164 bulkload.py] cli-common
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:04,883 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:04,906 bulkload.py] cli-common-dev
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:06,678 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:06,701 bulkload.py] cloop-utils
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:08,450 dev_appserver.py] "POST /upload HTTP/1.1" 200 -
INFO 2008-05-10 23:14:08,472 bulkload.py] clvm

Google App Engine - that enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications is out! Yes, there's Python involved and more to come. :-P

I did some contributions to App Engine before its launch and wrote an article about how to index your data using the bulk uploader in parallel. Yes, there's a really small search engine involved (ranking is up to you yet!).

Download the SDK while it's hot. Don't forget to read what the fuzz is about before you jump on conclusions.

Ok, cool! Time to post again: Like these mega interesting random TOP 10 lists people prepare every December and January, some love to speculate if the current year will be or not the year of Linux on desktop.

Please permit me state the obvious and argue that there will be no year of Linux on desktop, like there was never a year for Microsoft Windows or one being prepared for Apple Mac OS X! It is a evolving process, as dumb as it sounds. In 20, 30 years for historic reasons, some will call the 90s the decade of Linux rise and I agree. I believe that some history books (books?) will not omit the Linux impact (including of course some other key open source software) on Internet availability for the masses.

Do people really believe that "the year of the linux" will be the one when it reach a bigger domestic user base than Windows? Great, what about Linux usage through Internet? It's Linux on desktop and on steroids including - get ready - portability and tons of buzzwords I can't even keep up with. Don't get me wrong, I care about Linux usage on the real hardware that end users are using at home and not only through the Internet but come on, let's stop running in circles.

Congratulations to Yves-Alexis Perez (Corsac), Nicolas Fran ois (Nekral) and Sune Vuorela (Pusling) too \o/ Finally, some accounts (~30 ?) were created and i’m in. Thanks to all people involved in Debian and Kubuntu. In particular (no order) my co-maintainers, sponsors, helpers and application manager:
* Pierre habouzit (Madcoder)
* Mark Purcell (msp)
* Ana Beatriz Guerrero (Ana)
* Enrico Zini (enrico)
* Gustavo Franco (stratus)
* Lo c Minier (lool)
* Jonathan Riddell (riddell)
* Sarah Hobbs (hobbsee)
* and many many others But I don’t forget other people who missed this train: Cyril Brulebois (kibi). Next time, it’s your turn ! (i hope soon).

The best sci-fi series for a while IMNSHO, Battlestar Galactica next and last season will start with a two-hours episode (razor) in november 24! Fortunately I'll be in USA. So say we all. :P

I've just accepted an job offer from Google and I'm now moving from Rio de Janeiro to Belo Horizonte!

I would like to say thank you very much for those who helped me in the Debian project until now, you know who you are.

Happy BOFH^W sysadmin day for you! For those who aren't sysadmins, don't ask stupid questions for him/her today. Come on, just give a gift and enjoy the reaction.

By the way, Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction (AFD) turned 20, six days ago so real, raw, unique! Unlike autotuned crap all over the place that we hear today from non musicians... "But Appetite was also among the last classic rock records to be mastered with vinyl in mind, to be edited with a razor blade applied to two-inch tape, to be mixed by five people frantically pushing faders at a non-automated mixing board. "We used classic instruments and classic amps," says the album's producer and engineer, Mike Clink."

It's really confusing and we don't know all the details on what happened yet. What I know is that I went to Belo Horizonte from Rio and back yesterday (in a difficult flight with really bad weather) on one of the tam's airbus. I feel very bad about all that sad news. :/

The flight cited on the title was from Porto Alegre - where the International Free Software Forum takes place to Sao Paulo - the biggest city in the country.

In a totally unrelated event, one of the two airports in Rio de Janeiro (the smaller) is closed due to a fire incident, with no victims AFAIK. We've the international airport here (Rio) where it seems that the flights are being rerouted.

More information at: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1726359820070717

I've a Toy Story to tell you today and to make a long story a short one: debian-br is proud to announce the birth of a new baby during debconf 7, smile and say hello world to: get.Debian.net

If you don't want to figure out by yourself which one of the hundreds images (ISOs) available is the best for you to install Debian GNU/Linux. We do our best with get.Debian.net to figure out that automagically. You just need to use one of these javascript enabled browsers - yeah, nothing is perfect.

What it does?

• List the best images available to your architecture based on your browser information
• List Win32 loader for those browsing the web site using Windows
• get.Debian.net/bittorrent gives you link for torrents
• Make Debian looks more sexy. Good enough, Sam? :-P

TODO

• Use GeoIP for mirror selection - code in place, need list of mirrors
• i18n support
• List Live CD image where possible (i386 only?)
• Add get.Debian.net/kde, /xfce and /gnome support
• Figure out how to include usb and other images on the 1-click soup

Download Debian: http://get.debian.net/
Download Debian using Bittorrent: http://get.debian.net/bittorrent

Special thanks to faw and valessio.

yay, today is the Debian Day and for those not here with us in Edinburgh you can enjoy some of the cool stuff online:

Debconf 7 website:
http://debconf7.debconf.org

IRC:
irc.debian.org - #debconf, #debconf-uppertalks, #debconf-lowertalks, #debconf-upperbofs, #debconf-lowerbofs

Live Streams:
http://streams.video.debconf.org:8000/

Download and Install Debian (I recommend CD or DVD multi-arch, yes it will be installable on your regular PC, ibook and even on that shiny new amd64 server your company bought):
http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/

Use Debian Live:
http://live.debian.net/etch-builds/current/i386/

Join Debian - Yes, we're also recruiting! :-P
http://www.debian.org/devel/join/

Congrats to the organization team! :-) debian/rules

• simple-cdd: During lunch Vagrant agreed we need a symlink from simple-cdd to build-simple-cdd, I've added it into my branch with some other minor changes and we will include that stuff in our next upload.
• simple-cdd: After dinner Enrico told Vagrant about a simple-cdd demonstration and I said we could demo a 'merge' of both desktop and gnome-desktop tasks in a simple-cdd image containing just this new desktop profile, shrinking intentionally the list of packages. I'm sure people will be impressed how easy it's; the bonus point is learn more about the underrated tasksel. Stay tuned! :-)
• d-i-g: I've a new branch just for the mirroring support, Otavio and I figured out that dp-m lacks proper multiple architecture support but I'll keep working on mirroring support on the 'dp-m' branch while I solve other problems and add new features on master and help Otavio add multiple arch support into dp-m. Lots of work. Python volunteers are welcome. git repository is at: git clone http://people.debian.org/~stratus/git/d-i-g.git
• pkg-ltsp @ debian: You can say we've reunited here, me, vagrantc, otavio and pere. Vagrant is installing one Ltsp server and since we're short in time today - venue closing @ 11pm, probably we will have a lot more fun tomorrow.
  
• git and stgit: I'm in love with both tools, I blame Otavio that introduced me to them.
• people: Tomorrow I and faw will be changing room and in a few days all the brazilian people will be reunited here. I can't wait to see the canteen really crowded with us and the rest of the Debian people attending debconf. See you all and have a nice trip!

There's a lot more bits but I can't remember everything, oh I've also met siretart. :-)

• simple-cdd: Ignoring it for a while to work on debian-cd next gen, a.k.a d-i-g.
• d-i-g: git clone http://people.debian.org/~stratus/git/d-i-g.git
• debian desktop: wfm, but if doesn't for you and you're attending debcamp or will show up for debconf, please tell me what's broken for you
• debcamp: It could be better if we had more people doing real Debian related work