v-i NEWS

Release notes for v-i

This file summarizes user-visible changes between releases of v-i, the vmdb2-based installer of Debian onto bare metal systems.

Brown paper bag release.

Fix tutorial to actually work. Some examples were wrong or obsolete. Some details were missing. Also, simplify things a little by reducing unnecessary friction: for example, the download links now work to the release version.
Fix configure-installer to deal with no host key or user CA key being set.
Fix published files to be HTML, not Markdown, so they are easier to read.

Both the installer can now use wifi. The wifi password used in the installer is copied to the target system. It’s now possible to install without wired networking at all, and the booted system connects to wifi automatically.
SSH host key and host certificate can be set at installation time. This helps connecting to newly installed systems, for show using certificates. Also, users can log in using SSH user certificates instead of keys, if they have certificates made with trusted SSH CA keys.
The installer provides addresses via its on Ethernet via DHCP, to allow bootstrapping a LAN. It avoids serving addresses via its main Ethernet port, which it uses itself to access the Internet.
File systems other then ext4 are now supported on the target system, for example btrfs.
The installer attempts to use “secure discard”, when emptying drives. It falls back to plain discard, without an error, if the secure variant fails.

Root can now only log in via SSH using a key or certificate: passwords are not allowed for root on SSH. Console login as root doesn’t require a password.
Ansible variables can be given via files, not just in playbooks, when running the installer.
The installer now allows installing any Debian release. Debian 11 and 12 have been tested.
Improved documentation of the target specification file format and how to use SSH certificates.
Various sharp corners have been rounded to make development and use of the installer less painful.

New script configure-installer allows configuring an installer image that has been written to a USB drive or other block device. It replaced the older set-authorized-key script. It adds support for SSH CA and host host certificates for the installer, and accepting user certificates for logging into the installer.
The tutorial is a little improved and will hopefully be possible to understand even if you don’t already know everything.
The installer image now boots a little faster: it now uses systemd-networkd instead of iupdown to bring up the network, and the persistent journald system log is disabled.
The /etc/v-i-version file contains information about the version of the v-i repository used to build the installer image.

The rootfs.tar.gz tarball that used to be included in the installer image is gone. It wasn’t useful for anything but building an installer image.

This is the first release of v-i. It may or may not work for you. It will reliably destroy all your data.