I had a perfectly fine running installation process for virtual machines based on an instalinux CD, creating Debian 5 lenny VMs within minutes. The preseed file ensures installation of puppet, which takes care of "personalization" of the VMs later, so really I need only one installimage (which is why I'm not interested in FAI or similar heavyweights).
Since Debian 6 has come out, the preseed doesn't work anymore - it seems to be installing squeeze, but then the grub-installation fails, and I don't want squeeze anyway (yet).
This is the section of the preseed file that specifies the source:
####################################################################
# Installation Sources
####################################################################
# Where are we pulling bits from?
d-i mirror/http/hostname string ftp.de.debian.org
d-i mirror/http/directory string /debian/
d-i mirror/suite string lenny
# Post install APT setup
d-i apt-setup/uri_type select d-i
d-i apt-setup/hostname string ftp.de.debian.org
d-i apt-setup/directory string /debian/
d-i apt-setup/another boolean false
d-i apt-setup/security-updates boolean false
d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note
d-i prebaseconfig/reboot_in_progress note
d-i apt-setup/non-free boolean true
d-i apt-setup/contrib boolean true
Any idea how to get it to really install lenny (oldstable)? Thanks!
I found this post on superuser.com, indicating that it can't be done. Aparently the network installer, always grabs the latest stable packages. Now I will try to find out how to preseed a full-iso-install, rather than a network-install.
(If you like this, I'd suggest you upvote the original answer, not my repeat of it).
Update: Got it working by
http://<webserver>/d-i/lenny/preseed.cfgauto url=<webserver>