@Extelec dietPi?
@Extelec boot with nomodeset
appended to the kernel command line
@mirabilos I can get through the setup screens from memory and after that, headless...
@Extelec meanwhile I switched from d-i to debootstrap and a followup script that does what d-i would do plus gives me a shell in the chroot, even works cross-arch with qemu-user.
d-i’s partman lies.