[cut-team] Testing Snapshots Implemented (Round 2)

[Michael Gilbert]

All,

I finally found some free time to work on CUT, and here are the
results [0]. This iso will install the testing snapshot from the day
after squeeze d-i beta 1 was released (Oct 31st).  I figured that would
be a good date since the installer components should be fairly stable.
Like my last proof-of-concept, this installs directly from
snapshot.debian.org, but this time it uses the latest testing d-i beta,
rather than the stable installer. 

My build script is available at [0], and you can use that to build
other architectures or see/modify what I've done.  

I did have to work through a couple ugly bugs.  One of which is that
apt considers the snapshot release file out-of-date (since its from a
few weeks ago), and will error out.  To solve this, I disabled apt's
valid-until check. That really isn't ideal, and if anyone has ideas on
a better solution, I would be interested in that.

I also ended up using localudebs, so I get a stern warning that the d-i
build should not be used for official purposes.  We would of course need
to find a solution to that before putting out an official release, but I
don't see that as an immediate problem for these unofficial builds.

Another potential issue is that I get no progress during package
download/install after tasksel (just a blue screen).  I'm not sure if I
caused this or if it was already present in the d-i beta release.
Regardless, once the download/install task completes, the installation
prompts continue as normal, so its just a cosmetic issue.

One other potential hold up right now is there is no mirror network.
Asheesh mentioned that he may be able to provide some resources on that
front.  snapshot.d.o should have enough bandwidth to handle a small set
of testers for now, but if interest is too strong, we will need to
solve that.

As a nice surprise, the squeeze-security mirror gets added
automatically, which I hadn't anticipated. This is great because it
automatically updates libc and ghostscript, which are currently only
fixed in squeeze-security.  But the most important thing is that this
provides a straightforward avenue for snapshot security support (if
that is going to happen of course).

Another bonus is that users can build snapshot for any date that they
want.  If they thought testing worked better a month ago, they can
change the date, run my script, and install from the new media that
they generate themselves.

Well, there it is.  Go test it out, have fun, and let me know what you
think :)

Best wishes,
Mike

[0] http://alioth.debian.org/~gilbert-guest/testing-snapshot/round2/