On Sun 04 Nov 2018 at 16:53:19 (+0100), Pascal Hambourg wrote: > Le 04/11/2018 à 16:44, David Wright a écrit : > > On Sun 04 Nov 2018 at 15:51:21 (+0100), Pascal Hambourg wrote: > > > Le 04/11/2018 à 14:52, Steve McIntyre a écrit : > > > > Pascal Hambourg wrote: > > > > > > > > > > Do you mean that all packages with Priority: standard and their > > > > > dependencies are supposed to be present in installation CD images ? > > > > > > > > Correct. That's part of the design. It works well, until reality > > > > changes underneath us like this. :-) > > > > > > Well, if I am counting right, this is not true for the multi-arch > > > netinst image : > > > - 85 packages found in the main section for i386. > > > - Only 43 packages found in the multi-arch CD image main section. > > > > > > Is it an exception because a netinst image is not supposed to be used > > > without a mirror ? > > > > I was under the impression that "netinst" stood for "network installer", > > so the image only contains what's essential to bootstrap a standard > > system (or greater) from the network (Internet or local mirror). > > Netinst images contain everything required to install a functional > basic system even without a network.
Sure, except for the fact that I don't know how your "functional basic system" is defined. But I am assuming that it's something less than your system (above) with "all packages with Priority: standard and their dependencies", which is designed to provide "a reasonably small but not too limited char-mode system" (Debian Policy Manual). The Installation Guide quantifies this difference as approximately 187MB of disk space, using *their* definition of "minimal base installation", which is installed by not selecting "standard system utilities". What it is, exactly, that you get by installing from netinst without any Internet connection whatsoever would, I think, require an experiment. I'm not in a situation to try that as (a) I'm not at home, (b) I only have this laptop, (c) the images on it are i386 and amd64 single architecture ones, (d) I've no wherewithal to back it up. Whatever it is, it's what I was referring to as the "bootstrap" system (above). It seems that Brian is more familiar with its recent incarnations; it's some years since I played around with methods of minimising Internet throughput during installation. Cheers, David.