[Whonix-devel] Bug#940188: compatibility with grml-debootstrap, pbuilder and cowbuilder

Sun Sep 15 16:31:56 CEST 2019

Hi,

Quoting Jonas Smedegaard (2019-09-15 15:14:13)
> > what I still don't understand is why this would be needed.
> > 
> > Currently, if you do:
> > 
> > mmdebstrap buster ./output-directory
> > 
> > Then the resulting sources.list will be equal to what you wrote above.
> > 
> > Maybe I'm just dumb here but could either of you please go back to the 
> > start and try to explain precisely what it is, that you think is 
> > missing from mmdebstrap and why you need it?
> 
> Builtin default of mmdebstrap is nice.
> 
> Various debootstrap wrappers exist which supports replacing debootstrap 
> with an alternative command (e.g. cdebootstrap) but they commonly do not 
> support passing arbitrary commandline arguments.
> 
> What I (and we, I guess) want is that the nice default be overridable, 
> not only by passing options different from debootstrap but also in a way 
> supported by these pre-existing debootstrap wrappers.

I agree that it's important to allow defaults be overridable.

But even if mmdebstrap would add more options, as you already point out:
wrappers do not allow passing additional options. I guess that's where the idea
of mmdebstrap-sec-repo came from?

> Example: Bootstrapping a system omitting security updates e.g. because 
> an updated linux kernel is broken on my special setup.

You have multiple options:

    $ mmdebstrap stable ./output-directory http://deb.debian.org/debian
    $ mmdebstrap stable ./output-directory "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stable main"
    $ mmdebstrap stable ./output-directory /path/to/sources.list
    $ mmdebstrap stable ./output-directory - < /path/to/sources.list

I have added some new entries to the man page that list these to avoid
confusion in the future.

> Example: Bootstrapping a system additionally including backports.d.o.

Just add a "deb http://..." line to mmdebstrap.

> Example: Bootstrapping a system additionally including my custom addons.

Just add a "deb http://..." line to mmdebstrap.

I guess the problem then is, that wrappers don't allow to pass additional
debootstrap options?

I see two ways forward:

 1. file wishlist bugs against the wrappers, asking them to allow passing
    additional options to their $DEBOOTSTRAP invocation

 2. create any number of mmdebstrap wrappers that you need which do exactly
    what you want

What do you think?

Thanks!

cheers, josch
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: signature
URL: <http://www.whonix.org/pipermail/whonix-devel/attachments/20190915/c749dbb3/attachment-0001.sig>