Asking base-config questions before the first reboot

[Mark Shuttleworth]

OK, this looks more work than I expected.

Thanks for the design analysis, it was very well constructed and helped 
me understand what was involved. If you think this is doable in time 
without affecting your ability to address other installer issues before 
release, especially given the extra week Jeff has allowed us for this 
one, then let's do it, otherwise let's call it a Hoary goal (I can hear 
the rallying cry... no questions after the reboot!) and focus on other bugs.

Colin Watson wrote:

>We have a late Warty (actually, Sounder 9) design requirement to ask
>some base-config questions before the first reboot, so that if nothing
>goes wrong you reboot, the installer installs a load of packages, and
>you get dropped straight into X.
>
>Whatever we (probably I) do to implement this is going to get much less
>user testing before release than we would like, so running away from any
>kind of risk in the implementation is a very good idea. After looking at
>the alternatives for a while, I concluded that they were all complicated
>enough that posting a design document would be a good idea, if nothing
>else so that people have an idea what I'm doing.
>
>
>There's an existing package called baseconfig-udeb which does this by
>running base-config inside a chroot and Jedi-mind-tricking it into
>starting up a new instance of debconf which takes over the screen. This
>has a certain elegant insanity to it, but it isn't well-tested or
>well-integrated (in particular, the sequence of events in prebaseconfig
>is totally weird when baseconfig-udeb is involved), and in my own
>testing it experiences some bad display corruption, probably due to
>terminal type issues. I don't think we should rely on getting this
>working before Warty. Also, I'd prefer to reboot before spending time
>installing lots of packages so that we can make sure that the first
>reboot works properly and make absolutely sure we're using the
>production kernel. So, after some consideration, I've rejected this
>approach.
>
>A much simpler solution is to ask whatever questions are required
>pre-reboot using cdebconf as usual, and do the normal trick of copying
>questions from the cdebconf database at the beginning of base-config.
>The natural approaches to this involve too much code duplication,
>duplication of data such as timezone lists, and duplication of
>translated templates, which are going to be hard to continue to
>maintain.
>
>To me, the best solution seems to be to have the base-config source
>package itself spit out some new udebs, one for each set of questions
>(this makes it look nice on the main menu). These will act somewhat like
>the .config maintainer scripts in normal Debian packages: they will ask
>questions, but the answers to those questions will not be acted upon.
>When base-config runs for real post-reboot, it will fetch the answers
>and do whatever it needs to do with them.
>
>These new udebs are as follows:
>
>  base-config-timezone
>
>    Runs tzsetup, with country preset to whatever you selected in
>    countrychooser. Issues: tzsetup needs tempfile, which isn't in
>    busybox; needs /usr/share/zoneinfo/*, /etc/timezone, /etc/localtime,
>    /etc/default/rcS, maybe /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh from /target, so will
>    need to know to fetch them from the chroot; needs hwclock from
>    /target, similarly.
>
>    On the other hand, asking this question before the first reboot
>    makes it easier to use the d-i infrastructure to find out whether
>    there are other operating systems installed on the machine.
>
>  base-config-apt-setup
>
>    Asks whether you want to download updates from the network, probably
>    only if you're installing from CD-ROM and networking is configured.
>    Issues: this question is buried in the middle of apt-setup at the
>    moment. There'll probably be code duplication, but we can at least
>    avoid the translated template duplication.
>
>In addition, the shadow source package needs to spit out a udeb to ask
>for the new username and password:
>
>  passwd-udeb
>
>    Asks for a full name, username, password, password confirmation;
>    repeats if the password and password confirmation don't match.
>    Issues: again, there'll probably be code duplication here, but the
>    translated templates can be preserved.
>
>Issues with all of these:
>
>  debconf returns 30 on backup, but the exit code returned by a udeb for
>  backup is 10 for some reason. Will need a wrapper.
>
>  In order for this to work, base-config and shadow need to be
>  preseedable (i.e. honour answers already in the debconf database).
>  base-config is preseedable in Debian sid, but not in warty because the
>  work was only done recently; I don't think shadow is preseedable even
>  in sid yet.
>
>  Will require InstallerSeed changes, NEW processing, CD changes, and as
>  much testing as we can give it.
>
>Comments (especially Matt, Jeff, Mark)?
>
>  
>

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