Does anyone know how I can add menus or edit the ones used after debian installs. Example after debian installs it goes through it s inital setup and brings you to a menu with options like "desktop environment, web server, print server, dns server,file server,mail server sql database, manual package selection". I want to make a custom install cd based off the netinst cd only with my own package selection so as to save or remove d/lng when installing on non networked remote machines(possibly w/o web connection). Basically my own package repository. I can't seem to find where the menu options are stored for the desktop environment and sql database I want to change these options to instead of trying to d/l and install gnome and kde under desktop environment it installs icewm and synaptic off the cd and instead of installing postresql on sql database it installs mysql
plus being able to add other similar menues would be a nice addition.
Mithereal

"Guns don't kill people, they just make bullets fly faster"

Last version of Debian I got to use, with the exception of Knoppix and DSL, allowed to circumvent this problem. Why don't you only install the base system and configure it, then you burn all wanted packages onto a cd and use a script to install them (for example using dselect)?

i figured i was going to gt a reply like this well because i dont want that i never said all machines have same software installed.

A script of the proposed sort can actually be made quite flexible. You could make it ask for conformation before it installs a package or even take a parameter, say a config file, that describes the custom installation. Bash has some pretty nice graphical menues that would make the process enourmusly easy. It would be as if you were building your own installer, not modifying the debian installer, but it sounds good to me...

Scripts are powerful tools, never underestimate them!

tru that but im distributing this to others (less computer literate ppl) and just wanted to be pointed to editing the installer i dont have ne experience with writing scripts but i can understand whats goin on with a pre made one. im assuming that somewherein the base-config it calls apt-get or dpkg amd i was just going to modify the paramaters of that. mayhaps a good pointer would be a howto or ebook on shell scripting.

I used this manual a long time ago.

http://www.faqs.org/docs/abs/HTML/

Hope it will help you more than I did

Good luck

Try googling for "remaster cd" under www.google.com/linux or goto the Knoppix site as they have info on it. TLDP.org will probably also have the info. A search of LQ will likely also give you the required info, or at least more links for you to try.

Basically, one and all, the OP wants to remaster the Debian install CD to remove extraneous packages. he also wants to be able to pass this cd out to less techie friends and have them able to install it with little problems.