Thanks for responding. > When you define "interface=eth1" in your "append" statement, the > entire installation's meant to be done via this NIC. I doubt that you > can switch the NICs around via your preseed file as you're trying to > do - as is evidenced by the fact that d-i tries to contact debian.org > via your internal NIC.
I wasn't really trying to switch the NICs but just wanted to configure eth0 with an IP, gateway etc. so that when the installation is complete, I would be able to ssh to it from my management network. Anyway, I commented out the that line in preseed.cfg so there's no confusion: #d-i netcfg/choose_interface select eth0 and continue having these lines to use my internal server as the mirror: d-i mirror/protocol string httpd-i mirror/http/hostname string 192.168.1.12d-i mirror/http/directory string /Debian-6.0.7-amd64/debian/ well, it just tries to connect to ftp.us.debian.org anyway. > > Perhaps you can add "d-i netcfg/choose_interface seen false" then "d-i > netcfg/choose_interface select eth0" to your preseed file to switch > the NICs. I've never used "<anything> seen false" so this might not be > the correct use for it. AFAIK, it's used for you to be prompted for > that value not to reset it in order to pass it through the same > preseed file. I have disconnected eth0 for now and removed it from preseed.cfg so I guess this shouldn't matter (?) > > You might also want to add "DEBCONF_DEBUG=5" to the "append" line to > get more information about the failure but the latter's cause seems > quite clear nonetheless. > added it and saw that it infact is trying to connect to ftp.us.debian.org. I > have no idea where it is getting it from: debconf: --> GET mirror/http/hostname debconf: <-- 0 ftp.us.debian.org (I guess '0' indicates it couldn't find a preseed value and falling back to using default, which is ftp.us.debian.org?) Thanks again for your time!
