Install openSUSE Leap with custom XML

[Shizaho]

Hello,

mostly beginner here. Please bear with me, I might be completely wrong about this. I am trying to install openSUSE Leap 15.6 offline ISO in a VirtualBox, however our company network blocks port 80 and therefore I am not able to download the online repositories and the installer completely gets stuck on it. Sure, I could just install it at home in my private network, but I want to figure this out.

Now, my idea was to create my own .xml file with the included repos but changed to https. I could create a working file and load it with autoyast, but obviously that skips through all the interactive menus like keyboard/timezone/user setup and so on.

What could I do now? Is there anything for me to include in the xml file to tell yast2 to use the included repo urls, but still let me interactively set up all the various things?

This is my custom XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<profile xmlns="http://www.suse.com/1.0/yast2ns">

  <!-- Repositories -->
  <repositories>
    <repository>
      <name>Main Repository</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/$releasever/repo/oss/</url>
      <enabled>1</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Non-OSS Repository</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/$releasever/repo/non-oss/</url>
      <enabled>1</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Source Repository</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/leap/$releasever/repo/oss/</url>
      <enabled>0</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Debug Repository</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/leap/$releasever/repo/oss/</url>
      <enabled>0</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Main Update Repository</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/$releasever/oss</url>
      <enabled>1</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Update Repository (Non-Oss)</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/$releasever/non-oss/</url>
      <enabled>1</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Update Repository (Debug)</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/leap/$releasever/oss</url>
      <enabled>0</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/$releasever/sle/</url>
      <enabled>1</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Update repository of openSUSE Backports</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/$releasever/backports/</url>
      <enabled>1</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Update repository with Backports debuginfo package updates for openSUSE Leap</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/$releasever/backports_debug/</url>
      <enabled>0</enabled>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <name>Untested Updates</name>
      <url>https://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/$releasever-test/</url>
      <enabled>0</enabled>
    </repository>
  </repositories>
</profile>

My head is burning from this, lol.

Hope someone has an idea. Sorry if this is really stupid!

[hendersj]

Tell it to install without using the online repos, and then once the installation is done, you can add them.

Using the offline ISO, you can do the installation completely without Internet connectivity, so that’s the approach I’d take. Then when adding the online repos, make sure they’re using https.

[Shizaho]

Hi, thank you for your reply.

I did use the offline ISO and I tried to install the online repositories as well as skip them, which caused the installer to get stuck regardless at varying points. With the repositories selected, it would forever get stuck on the first download. If disabled, the installer would get stuck near the end, when it is trying to save the installation settings. With the help of a colleague we could figure out that the installer still tried to access the online repository in both cases, which in my case it got completely stuck on.

[arvidjaar]

@Shizaho

the installer still tried to access the online repository in both cases

Could be due to openSUSE-repos-Leap/openSUSE-repos-Leap-NVIDIA. You could try to explicitly disable them in the software selection.

[marel]

That is strange, if you really did install without the online repositories the install should work.

Can you set up Virtualbox without a network interface? Maybe the installer does see Virtualbox has a network interface and therefore is using it. Once the install is done add network interfacing.

[hendersj]

This morning, I took a shot at installing it in a VMware Workstation virtual machine with the network connection unplugged, and that worked.

So it may well be that the existence of a valid IP address means that the installer will skip the online update if asked, but those repo packages that @arvidjaar noted might be ignoring that setting (which might be worth raising a bug about).

Seems the easiest workaround is probably just to disconnect the virtual network interface in the VM’s configuration during installation.