Preseeding dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 10:42:29PM -0400, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
> I posted the following to ubuntu-users and to the installation forum but
> did not get any answers. I'm finding d-i is considerably more
> complicated than kickstart and not as well-documented. I aim to change
> that by documenting the preseeded PXE installation process that I'm
> working on right now.

I'm interested in whether you've found and read the installation guide
that includes an appendix on preseeding. It certainly is more
complicated, but then again it's also more powerful.

> I am striving to have a totally hands-off installation using preseeding.
> I have considered other alternatives like DRBL/Clonezilla, FAI, and
> kickstart and have rejected them because preseeding seems to be the
> preferred Debian/Ubuntu way of integrating with the Debian Installer (d-i).

We support both preseeding and Kickstart. Debian only supports
preseeding, although I've been trying to get Kickstart in.

> If I specify en_US as the locale, the installation will work fine.
> However, if I specify en_CA, the first time I attempt to log into the
> console, the keyboard mapping will be incorrect and I'll see multiple
> diamonds for every keystroke. Typing blindly does not work. To work
> around this, I log in remotely via ssh and then run "dpkg-reconfigure
> console-setup" to set up the console and then I can log in via a local
> console. This is not a desirable situation given the requirement to do
> hands-off installations.
> 
> I have tried the following in my preseed file but it has not made any
> difference. I extracted the values below using debconf-get-selections on
> a system that I had installed manually. Any ideas on how I can do away
> with the need to reconfigure the console manually after a preseed
> installation?
> 
> #############
> d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
> d-i console-setup/layoutcode string us
> d-i console-setup/variantcode string

Firstly, you can leave out console-setup/ask_detect and
console-setup/variantcode.

Secondly, are you aware that console-setup usually runs before the
preseed file is processed? You need to set the layout on the kernel
command line, using the following boot parameter:

  console-setup/layoutcode=us

I'd like to see your full preseeding setup for en_CA (minus any
workarounds you've tried to apply) to see if I can reproduce the
problem.

> d-i console-setup console-setup/variant select USA
> d-i console-setup console-setup/charmap select UTF-8
> d-i console-setup console-setup/toggle select No toggling
> d-i console-setup console-setup/compose select No compose key
> d-i console-setup console-setup/fontsize-text select  16
> d-i console-setup console-setup/optionscode string
> d-i console-terminus console-terminus/new_file_names note
> d-i console-setup console-setup/layout select  USA
> d-i console-setup console-setup/detect detect-keyboard
> d-i console-setup console-setup/detected note
> d-i console-setup console-setup/codesetcode string Lat15
> d-i console-setup console-setup/dont_ask_layout error
> d-i console-setup console-setup/modelcode string pc105
> d-i console-setup console-setup/ask_detect boolean true
> d-i console-setup console-setup/altgr select No AltGr key
> d-i console-setup console-setup/ttys string /dev/tty[1-6]
> d-i console-setup console-setup/model select Generic 105-key (Intl) PC
> d-i console-setup console-setup/fontsize-fb select 16
> d-i console-setup console-setup/switch select No temporary switch
> d-i console-setup console-setup/codeset select # Latin1 and Latin5 -
> western Europe and Turkic languages
> d-i console-setup console-setup/toggle select  No toggling
> d-i console-setup console-setup/fontface select VGA
> d-i console-setup console-setup/fontsize string 16

All of this is malformed input; remove the second field. However, you
should just remove this altogether as there's no need for it.

If you still have problems, please post /etc/default/console-setup from
immediately after installation, before running dpkg-reconfigure.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]