Patching Debian 11 and 12 iso images to be Xen HVM compatible

Owned by Friedrich Möller, created
Last updated: Aug 07, 2024
1 min read

The Debian 11 and Debian 12 iso images have an installer that can crash when started in a HVM configured Xen virtual machine.

Here is a small tutorial how to patch the iso image to be installable. You need a linux environment and need to have the xorriso and initramfs-tools packages installed.

 

  1. Mount the original iso.

    mkdir CD sudo mount -o ro -t iso9660 debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso CD

 

  1. Copy the initrd.gz file that needs to modification to your local folder.

    cp -p CD/install.amd/initrd.gz .

 

  1. Unmount the iso again.

    sudo umount CD

 

  1. Extract the initramfs directory.

 

  1. Edit the start-udev script.

Comment out following line:

Change it to following and save:

 

  1. Re-pack the initrd.

 

  1. Create the patched installation iso.

     

  2. Clean up (optional).

 

This tutorial is based on a post from the debian-user list:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/08/msg01339.html

 

 

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