What happened to preseed/late_command?

[Josef Wolf]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2007 at 07:45:58PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 12, 2007 at 06:37:43PM +0100, Josef Wolf wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 12, 2007 at 09:58:30AM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > Could you give a more concrete example? Perhaps it's the commands
> > > you're running that are problematic?
> > 
> > I've created a customized install CD based on gutsy alternate CD.  To
> > load my preseed file, I changed the append line in isolinux.cfg (I break
> > the line to improve readability)
> 
> Since I routinely lint people's preseeding for them, I'll do so now ...

Thanks again for your suggestions, Colin!

> >    append  debian-installer/locale=de_DE \
> Perhaps de_DE.UTF-8 would be better nowadays - I can never remember
> whether localechooser derives that automatically.

Yes, this makes sense.  What about de_DE at euro?  Is this UTF-8 also?

> >            console-setup/variant=Germany \
> >            console-setup/layout=Germany \
> The questions intended for preseeding are console-setup/layoutcode and
> console-setup/variantcode, and those take XKB layout and variant names,
> so this should really be console-setup/layoutcode=de and omit
> console-setup/variantcode. (Yours may work, but isn't guaranteed.)
> 
> >            console-setup/ask_detect=false \
> 
> As a bonus, this is implied by preseeding console-setup/layoutcode to
> any non-empty string.

I found those settings via google.  I remember I did lots of try'n'error
since it did not work as I expected.  Now I know why it did not work ;-)
With console-setup/layoutcode=de it seems to work much better.

> >    d-i debian-installer/locale string de_DE
> >    d-i console-setup/layoutcode string de-latin1-nodeadkeys
> This probably isn't used, but de-latin1-nodeadkeys dates from the days
> before console-setup. I'd recommend just removing this.

done.

> >    d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
> In 7.10, you also need 'd-i partman-auto/method string regular'.

OK.

> >    d-i apt-setup/restricted boolean true
> >    d-i apt-setup/universe boolean true
> These are just the defaults.

OK, removed.

> >    tasksel tasksel/first multiselect ubuntu-standard
> This should be standard rather than ubuntu-standard.

OK.

Below are the current settings with the changes you suggested integrated.
Guess what, preseed/late_command started working again, although I have
not changed anything what should have an effect on its setting.  Any idea
what is going on here?

Again, I added line breaks in this mail only to improve readability.

isolinux.cfg:

    append  debian-installer/locale=de_DE.UTF-8 \
            console-setup/layoutcode=de \
            file=/cdrom/preseed/generic.seed \
            initrd=/install/initrd.gz \
            quiet \
            DEBCONF_DEBUG=5 \
            --

generic.seed:

    d-i pkgsel/install-language-support boolean true
    d-i netcfg/choose_interface select eth0
    d-i netcfg/wireless_wep string
    d-i mirror/country string enter information manually
    d-i mirror/http/hostname string archive.ubuntu.com
    d-i mirror/http/directory string /ubuntu
    d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
    d-i partman-auto/method string regular
    d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true
    d-i time/zone string Europe/Berlin
    d-i apt-setup/security_host string security.ubuntu.com
    d-i passwd passwd/make-user boolean true
    d-i passwd/user-fullname string Dummy User
    d-i passwd/username string dummy
    d-i passwd/user-password-crypted password deleted
    d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true
    d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true
    tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard
    d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note
    xserver-xorg xserver-xorg/autodetect_monitor boolean true
    xserver-xorg xserver-xorg/config/monitor/lcd boolean true
    xserver-xorg xserver-xorg/config/monitor/selection-method \
           select medium
    
    d-i preseed/late_command string \
      cp -a /cdrom/preseed/instfiles /target; \
      chmod -R u=rwX,go= /target/instfiles; \
      cd /target/instfiles/gem/scripts/start; \
      for i in *; do \
        ln -s /instfiles/gem/scripts/start/$i /target/etc/rcS.d; \
      done