Debian Installer Buster Alpha 3 release

June 19th, 2018

The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the third alpha release of the installer for Debian 10 Buster.

Improvements in this release

apt-setup:
- If installing from a single-desktop single CD image, comment it out from sources.list after installation like we do with the netinst images, along with an explanation in comment as well.
cryptsetup:
- Upgrade to upstream version 2.0.0.
debian-installer:
- Bump Linux kernel ABI from 4.13.0-1 to 4.16.0-2.
- Replace c_rehash with openssl rehash (#895074). That should only affect builds with SSL_CERTS enabled; regular HTTPS support comes from ca-certificates anyway.
- Ensure stricter separation from host's apt configuration by setting APT_CONFIG during the build process.
- Tweak Acquire::Languages, Apt::Architecture, Apt::Architectures and disable both apt.conf.d and preferences.d snippets.
- Drop libnewt0.52 from Build-Depends, the library now provides an udeb.
- Run fc-cache when /etc/fonts or /usr/share/fonts exist (for gtk targets), to avoid having to generate UUIDs at runtime, which can be hard because of missing entropy (#898468).
debian-installer-utils:
- Fix "list-devices partition" to also report LVM logical volumes (#868848).
debootstrap:
- Add support for bookworm.
- Add Acquire-By-Hash support.
- Too many other improvements to list them all here.
espeakup:
- Fix path to voice definitions, which fixes language auto-switch in the installer.
- Configure debconf frontend to readline on the installed system for better accessibility.
- Improve console/X11 VT switches.
flash-kernel:
- Fix issues in handle_dtb (#870430).
- Add option to allow "any" in Kernel-Flavors (#883547).
- Warn when ubootenv.d snippet will be ignored (#884376).
- Adjust sunxi boot script to prefer prefix variable if defined.
- Add support for relative paths for DTB-Id (#860304).
- Add compatibility symlink to dtb in vendor sub-directory.
- Add support for root device specified by PARTLABEL.
- Provide hook to start EFI application (#873390).
- Fix when no Kernel-Flavors are defined (#887803).
- Add support for Boot-Kernel-Path-Version, Boot-Initrd-Path-Version, and Boot-DTB-Path-Version
iso-scan:
- Detect LVM logical volumes so that they can be used to find the ISO image being looked for (#868859).
- Copy the ISO image into RAM before mounting it when debconf question iso-scan/copy_iso_to_ram is true. This makes it possible to use the disk that provided the ISO image for (automatic) partitioning (#868900).
localechooser:
- Use iso_3166-1.mo filename instead of the compatibility symlink (#889963).
- languagelist: Enable Georgian and Lao in bterm.
- Enable all languages when using speakup_soft, which supports any UTF-8 language.
- Enable all languages when using speakup_dummy too, which can also support any UTF-8 language.
mdadm:
- Use the same udev rules in the installer and in the installed system.
partman-lvm:
- Make device_remove_lvm() detect errors, so as to stop early if anything goes wrong.
ppp:
- Use /bin/ip instead of /sbin/ifconfig in the interfaces configuration for the installed system (#889295).
- Consider interface names using udev predictable interface naming (#873391).
rescue:
- Make sure to not provide duplicate entries in the list of possible devices for the root partition.
util-linux:
- Ship fallocate in util-linux-udeb (#882001).
wide-dhcpv6:
- Build against static flex library to avoid a runtime dependency on libfl2 (#893988).

Hardware support changes

debian-installer:
- armhf: Add support for Cubietruck_plus.
- armhf: Enable grub-efi mini.iso (netboot).
- arm64: Generate u-boot media for pine64_plus.
- Add support for the NanoPiNeo.
flash-kernel:
- Add support for installing 32bit kernels on the Raspberry Pi 3 (#886225).
- Make ubootenv.d work on Wandboard (#884375).
- Make ubootenv.d work on CuBox-i.
- Add support for SolidRun Clearfog Boards (#839595).
- Add support for SolidRun CuBox (dove) (#876773).
- Fix typos in imx-base boot script.
linux:
- armel: Adjust lzo-modules and mtd-modules contents and some reverse-dependencies.
- Add dependency from nic-modules to zlib-modules.
- armhf: Add i2c-exynos5 to i2c-modules (#895976).
- Move arc4 and ecb from nic-wireless-modules to crypto-modules (#895362).
- Add algif_skcipher to crypto-modules (#896968).
- Rename lzo-modules to compress-modules
- Add zstd_decompress to compress-modules and make squashfs-modules depend on it.
- amd64: Add vmd to scsi-modules, required for NVMe on some systems (#891482).
- Update patterns for PHY modules included in usb-modules (#893154).
- Enable NVME_MULTIPATH, NVME_FC, NVME_TARGET_FC, move nvme module into scsi-modules installer udeb.
- arm64: add multifunction devices.
- arm64: add mvebu comphy for armada 8K.
- armel: Remove fbcon from fb-modules package.
parted:
- Improve detection of Apple systems (#890587).
- Prevent crash resizing FAT with very deep directories (#840709).
- Fix recognition of FAT file system after resizing (#840710).
- Add support for NVMe devices (#886960).
- Update DASD handling (#887016).

Localization status

75 languages are supported in this release.
Full translation for 9 of them.

Known issues in this release

See the errata for details and a full list of known issues.

Feedback for this release

We need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so please try it. Installer CDs, other media and everything else you will need are available at our web site.

Thanks

The Debian Installer team thanks everybody who has contributed to this release.