Hi everyone,
I would like to share an experience regarding the installation process on minimal Debian 12 images, which cost me significant time, and propose a small improvement for the installation script.
During the installation on a corporate-standard minimal image, I encountered repeated “invalid event level format” errors and failures in creating system users and IP configurations. After a long debugging process, I identified two main root causes:
-
Locale Mismatch: The system’s default locale was causing the script to fail while parsing command outputs (like grep/awk).
-
Missing/Virtual Base Packages: Critical tools like
gawkwere either missing or present as virtual packages, leading to failures in the script’s internal logic for user and network management.
While these issues can be solved manually before running the script, I believe the installer’s reliability would be greatly enhanced if it included:
-
An explicit internal override for the locale (e.g., forcing LC_ALL=C.UTF-8) at the start of the execution.
-
A pre-check or automatic installation of essential base utilities (like gawk, procps, etc.) before proceeding with the main setup.
Adding these few lines of logic would prevent many “silent” installation failures, especially on minimal or non-standard corporate images, and save other administrators from wasting hours on environment-specific troubleshooting.
Best regards,