[Bug 1202440] [NEW] support hooks directly in preseed file

[Jeremy Kitchen]

Public bug reported:

It would be great to be able to define hooks directly in the preseed
file:

d-i hook/post-base-installer/0 string "in-target adduser foo"

Something like that.

The use case I have for this is such:
I'm building a preseed file to bootstrap a system up to installing puppet and running it. The problem is, I need my puppet uid/gid to be consistent every time. For other users, I just add them to my puppet configuration so when puppet runs the user is created with the appropriate uid, but in order to do that I need to install puppet which will install its own user (with its own, possibly inconsistent) uid.

Therefore I need to create the user/group prior to installing puppet.
When I asked about doing this on #ubuntu-installer, the response I got
from cjwatson (thanks, by the way!) was to use preseed/early_install to
add a hook to /usr/lib/post-base-installer.d/ to call "in-target adduser
foo". Since there can only be one early_install, having to add this to a
potentially long and complex chain of commands could get pretty hairy,
so being able to do:

d-i hook/post-base-installer/00_add_foo_user string "in-target adduser
foo"

Would be much much cleaner and also allow for defining multiple hooks,
so if you're generating your preseed file with a script it should make
it easier to manage multiple parts of your script adding their own
hooks.

I'm a pretty new user of preseed, so I can't come up with more use
cases, but I can't imagine it would be that hard to add this
functionality, and I think it could be incredibly useful.

** Affects: debian-installer (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1202440

Title:
  support hooks directly in preseed file

Status in “debian-installer” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  It would be great to be able to define hooks directly in the preseed
  file:

  d-i hook/post-base-installer/0 string "in-target adduser foo"

  Something like that.

  The use case I have for this is such:
  I'm building a preseed file to bootstrap a system up to installing puppet and running it. The problem is, I need my puppet uid/gid to be consistent every time. For other users, I just add them to my puppet configuration so when puppet runs the user is created with the appropriate uid, but in order to do that I need to install puppet which will install its own user (with its own, possibly inconsistent) uid.

  Therefore I need to create the user/group prior to installing puppet.
  When I asked about doing this on #ubuntu-installer, the response I got
  from cjwatson (thanks, by the way!) was to use preseed/early_install
  to add a hook to /usr/lib/post-base-installer.d/ to call "in-target
  adduser foo". Since there can only be one early_install, having to add
  this to a potentially long and complex chain of commands could get
  pretty hairy, so being able to do:

  d-i hook/post-base-installer/00_add_foo_user string "in-target adduser
  foo"

  Would be much much cleaner and also allow for defining multiple hooks,
  so if you're generating your preseed file with a script it should make
  it easier to manage multiple parts of your script adding their own
  hooks.

  I'm a pretty new user of preseed, so I can't come up with more use
  cases, but I can't imagine it would be that hard to add this
  functionality, and I think it could be incredibly useful.

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