Help with modification on the Debian installer (tasksel)

[nidr]

I hope this is the right place to ask
I want to modify the Debian installer.
So I've downloaded the source of tasksel 2.23 and made a deb from the
source with the "dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot" command. And replaced my
"unofficial" tasksel_2.23_all.deb file with the original one in the
pool/main/t/tasksel directory on my sarge iso.
So I thought this would work (just for testing purpose atm), but I get
an error under the installation procedure "Installing the Debian base
system":
Validating tasksel...
Debootstrap Error
Couldn't download tasksel.

I've updated the md5sums.txt file with the command "find -follow -type
f` > md5sum.txt"
I've also updated the md5sum in the Packages.gz files located in
dists/sarge/main/binary-i386/ and dists/testing/main/binary-i386/
What am I doing wrong?
I haven't modified the source at all, just made a .deb out of the
original tasksel 2.23 source.

-Thanks for any input.

[Jeroen]

Hm, this is quite a hacky way to do so... but should work. Did you also pay attention to the size parameter in Packages.gz? It should be exactly the same bytes as the .deb.

Usually it's a bad idea though to change a .deb without actually changing the version number. I strongly advice to take the source package, make your changes, increase the changelog, and build a package out of that. You can use tools like apt-ftparchive (what ftp.debian.org uses) or dpkg-scanpackages to generate Packages.gz files.

btw, something you officially also would need to change is the Release file, as it contains the md5sum of the Packages.gz file, and the signature of it in Release.gpg. But as far as I know, debootstrap doesn't check that.

[Guest]

I hope this is the right place to ask
I want to modify the Debian installer.
So I've downloaded the source of tasksel 2.23 and made a deb from the
source with the "dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot" command. And replaced my
"unofficial" tasksel_2.23_all.deb file with the original one in the
pool/main/t/tasksel directory on my sarge iso.
So I thought this would work (just for testing purpose atm), but I get
an error under the installation procedure "Installing the Debian base
system":
Validating tasksel...
Debootstrap Error
Couldn't download tasksel.

I've updated the md5sums.txt file with the command "find -follow -type
f` > md5sum.txt"
I've also updated the md5sum in the Packages.gz files located in
dists/sarge/main/binary-i386/ and dists/testing/main/binary-i386/
What am I doing wrong?
I haven't modified the source at all, just made a .deb out of the
original tasksel 2.23 source.

-Thanks for any input.