priority of netcfg/get_domain

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2007 at 04:24:42PM +0100, Josef Wolf wrote:
> In netconf-1.40ubuntu1, the debconf priority for netcfg/get_domain is
> reduced to medium.  As a consequence, the installer no longer asks for
> the domain name.  This is fine as long as a domain name is provided
> e.g. via dhcp.  But without dhcp, the domain name will be left empty.
> Unfortunately, many packages need a proper domain configuration.
> There is even no way to force d-i to ask for a domain name with
> preseeding.
> 
> Anybody knows why the priority was lowered from high to medium?

We actually lowered this a long time ago (in Hoary), because it wasn't
thought sufficiently important to ask in the default installer workflow.
(The changelog entry you're seeing in netcfg 1.40ubuntu1 is simply
because, as a matter of policy, we list all the remaining Ubuntu changes
every time we merge from Debian.)

Now, this change was made long before Ubiquity existed. Nowadays, d-i is
under less pressure than before to ask as few questions as possible, and
to be honest I think we were only really considering DHCP when we made
that change anyway. Would it address your problem if we set the priority
back to high just for static network configuration? I think that would
make sense.

> Is there a way to force d-i to ask for a domain name when none is
> provided via dhcp?

Unfortunately netcfg is rather buggy in this respect, specifically:

  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343269

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]