[03:15] <CIA-18> ubiquity: superm1 * r2179 mythbuntu-ubiquity/ (debian/changelog scripts/mythbuntu/apply-services): fix typo in mysql-server
[10:56] <twb> cjwatson: hale.
[10:57] <cjwatson> dia duit
[11:01] <twb> So I'm using just the kernel & initrd to do the unattended network install -- rather than using casper over nfs and the live installer.
[11:02] <twb> Does the simple d-i installer support GTK, like Etch?
[11:02] <cjwatson> no
[11:02] <cjwatson> I spent quite a bit of energy on that, but eventually decided to go the ubiquity path instead
[11:03] <cjwatson> I think GTK d-i needs a lot more effort put into plugins before it's sufficiently usable
[11:03] <cjwatson> but for unattended installs it doesn't really seem like a big deal
[11:03] <twb> On Ubuntu, or generally?
[11:03] <twb> Yeah, I was more curious than anything.
[11:03] <cjwatson> well, generally, but obviously Debian can do what it likes :-)
[11:04] <cjwatson> the partitioner is the main problem
[11:04] <twb> What's wrong with it?  It seemed fine to- ah.
[11:04] <cjwatson> it's pretty much just a straight conversion of the newt installer
[11:04] <cjwatson> the only win seems to be that you get to use the mouse
[11:04] <twb> I think that's a corrollary of trying to smush the partitioner into the UI-agnostic infrastructure
[11:05] <cjwatson> only because nobody's written plugins :)
[11:05] <cjwatson> cdebconf plugins let you make things UI-aware
[11:05] <twb> Interesting.
[11:05] <cjwatson> but it's hard work to do for the partitioner
[11:05] <twb> I get the impression that people have had trouble with the Ubuntu live partitioner, though, too.  Under Feisty.
[11:06] <cjwatson> and the infrastructure for cdebconf plugins is unfortunately not quite finished (libd-i needs work)
[11:06] <cjwatson> sure, ours is far from perfect either, I acknowledge
[11:06] <cjwatson> don't get me wrong, I'm not doing a "rah rah Ubuntu rocks Debian sucks" kind of thing
[11:06] <twb> No worries.
[11:07] <twb> It's clear to me you're level-headed about it.
[11:07] <cjwatson> partitioning UI is hard; even the dedicated implementations (gparted, qtparted) have major flaws
[11:07] <cjwatson> I don't think anyone's done it right on Linux yet
[11:08] <cjwatson> at least not in a graphical way; the text-only ones are pretty good within that medium
[11:08] <twb> Especially if you introduce multiple label types, LVM, md, and trying to maybe not blow away existing partitions.
[11:08] <cjwatson> right. we have a design we're working towards that should accommodate LVM and md, but (again, spot the theme) it's hard work
[11:09] <twb> Just "blow it away and do something sensible" is working fine.
[11:09] <cjwatson> and the flaws will probably only become apparent once it's in place
[11:09] <cjwatson> (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubiquity/AdvancedPartitionerRewrite)
[11:10] <twb> What I'm keen on is for the whole metainit/upstart-sysv-compat stuff to clear up so we can actually have daemons using upstart properly
[11:11] <cjwatson> yeah, I'm no expert on that though
[11:11] <twb> I did some work on thttpd recently and it's distressing how bad the init.d scripts are, because they're currently written by people who aren't experts on init, but rather experts on <whatever daemon>
[11:12] <cjwatson> twb: so from your comments in /msg earlier I gathered that there was some problem with putting the keymap stuff on the kernel command line?
[11:13] <cjwatson> are you running over the length limit?
[11:13] <twb> cjwatson: no, it's just inelegant
[11:14] <cjwatson> if you're prepared to modify the initrd, you can use a /preseed.cfg file in there for the stuff that comes before bringing up the network
[11:14] <cjwatson> or, as I say, kickstart works around it by bringing the network up early before fetching the preseed file
[11:14] <cjwatson> er, before fetching the kickstart file
[11:14] <twb> cjwatson: I was already wondering about that so I won't have to run an HTTP daemon
[11:15] <twb> Using file= that is
[11:15] <cjwatson> you can preseed everything in /preseed.cfg if you like, that's valid enough
[11:15] <cjwatson> file= doesn't come right at the start
[11:15] <cjwatson> it comes after keymap handling too
[11:15] <twb> Hmm, so without arguments it will use /preseed.cfg?
[11:15] <cjwatson> file= is basically for CD installs when you want to do file=/cdrom/...
[11:15] <twb> Oh, I see.
[11:16] <cjwatson> or to fetch stuff off the hard disk
[11:16] <cjwatson> (but nevertheless after hardware detection runs)
[11:16] <cjwatson> yes, /preseed.cfg in the initrd is used unconditionally - any file= or url= arguments supplement it
[11:16] <twb> If it uses /preseed.cfg from the initrd without being told, can I tell it NOT to do that -- for the odd occasion when I want to cancel out preseeding and do a fully manual install
[11:16] <twb> ...or would I have to have a separate initrd?
[11:17] <cjwatson> you'd have to use a separate initrd
[11:17] <twb> OK.
[11:17] <cjwatson> interesting thought though, maybe a wishlist on the preseed package
[11:18] <twb> An example would be that all my systems would be seeded with TZ=Australia/Melbourne, unless we're building a box to ship out to a large customer.
[11:19] <twb> Although normally I guess we'd make them a new netboot entry with different initrd/seed anyway.
[11:24] <cjwatson> timezone's handled much later, of course, so you could do that with URL preseeding or similar if you wanted
[11:25] <twb> Good point -- I could have the preseed in the initrd ONLY set up the keyboard and suchlike, and then do the rest via HTTP
[11:32] <cjwatson> right
[12:34] <Nyct> hello there
[12:34] <Nyct> anyone free to give me some advice on installing Ubuntu - first time user here
[12:42] <xivulon> cjwatson, loopinstallation requires to override a few files in the target system (init.d scripts, initramfs-tools, and update-grub), what is a good way to do that?
[12:45] <xivulon> I'd guess that the patched packages should hit the gutsy repo and I'd only need to override the packages inside the ISO. Is that ok?
[12:46] <xivulon> I still need to go over the patches and clean them up by the way (probably this w/e).
[13:25] <cjwatson> xivulon: gutsy isn't going to change now
[14:03] <xivulon> cjwatson, what do you suggest?
[14:05] <xivulon> I mean overriding the files is ugly but easy, the issue is of course when people upgrade such packages.
[14:26] <cjwatson> xivulon: for init.d scripts and initramfs-tools, write them as separate scripts rather than changing existing ones; that should be possible for the most part
[14:26] <cjwatson> xivulon: what needs to be changed in update-grub?
[14:28] <xivulon> Hmm umountfs must skip /host (and /boot) whenever umounting /host will cause / to jump...
[14:28] <xivulon> Not sure I can do that in a separate script
[14:29] <xivulon> So basically if umounting mountpoint X you unmount device Y which also host root, then you have to skip
[14:31] <xivulon> As for update-grub kopt is not set correctly in the case of a loop installation
[14:31] <xivulon> http://codebrowse.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-installer/wubi/gutsy/annotate/ago%40nb-ago-20071019072229-l4szhanyv3n0erks?file_id=updategrub-20071009210021-2g4lnkrfrydx012e-3
[14:37] <xivulon> Then of course you need to take care of /host & co in umountroot
[14:38] <xivulon> But that can be done in a separate script
[14:40] <cjwatson> OK, I'm just telling you what the constraints are. It is not possible to change gutsy for things other than major regressions, security problems, or data loss bugs.
[14:41] <cjwatson> so that's what you need to work around in order to support gutsy
[14:54] <xivulon> cjwatson, what we used to do before, was to have an init.d script that would patch subsequent init.d scripts. That will work, but it's not the most elegant solution.
[15:04] <xivulon> dpkg-divert will be used for update-grub
[15:20] <xivulon> The plan is to use dpkg-divert for init.d/update-gurb/initramfs-tools within lupin-support, and override the ISO to provide an updated lupin-support.deb. Any issue with that?
[15:21] <cjwatson> you can't use dpkg-divert for anything in /etc
[15:21] <xivulon> I thought it was too easy
[15:21] <cjwatson> it doesn't work at all for configuration files (not shipped in .debs), and it breaks in corner cases for conffiles (shipped in .debs)
[15:22] <cjwatson> dpkg-divert is probably reasonable for the rest of it
[15:22] <xivulon> For init.d I can use an early start/stop script to override umountfs
[15:31] <xivulon> Okthat's all I needed to know, thx
[17:47] <xivulon> cjwatson, I really think that /sbin/mount.ntfs should be skept within sendsigs.
[17:48] <xivulon> users that have ntfs(-3g) mounted and reboot, will end up with the ntfs killed by sendsigs as opposed of being unmounted
[17:48] <xivulon> this is not a lupin only featrue, and can result in data loss/fs corruption
[17:51] <xivulon> now reading your comment in #151580
[17:52] <cjwatson> please make this sort of comment in bug reports rather than by IRC
[17:52] <cjwatson> I find it very difficult to keep track of bugs raised on IRC and would prefer people not to do it
[17:52] <xivulon> Sure, I had missed your previous comment. I think you have a good point
[17:53] <cjwatson> and shifting between bug reports and IRC when the issue isn't immediately resolvable makes it extremely difficult to look back later and see why something was done
[21:52] <joshk> evand: hey
[21:52] <joshk> is there a way to get proof that the ubuntu boot procedure did or didn't successfully fetch the preseed file?
[21:55] <evand> joshk: I *think* it writes stdout/stderr to /var/log/casper.log
[21:55] <joshk> ah, darn. network is unreachable
[21:56] <joshk> DHCP being weird, i guess
[21:56] <joshk> that kinda sucks, though.
[21:57] <evand> what do you mean?
[21:57] <joshk> reconciling syslog and capser.log, network was available 13 seconds later
[21:59] <evand> hrm, I could move that further down in the chain of events.
[21:59] <evand> cjwatson: ^-- thoughts?
[21:59] <joshk> don't you have all sorts of dbus noise to figure out whether dhcp client has gotten a lease yet?
[22:02] <evand> hrm, indeed.  I'll toy around with that later.
[22:02] <evand> But first I need to head to the bank.
[22:02] <joshk> money's important.
[22:02] <evand> 'tis indeed :)
[22:38] <joshk> is there a way to tell preseed to mount an arbitrary device for preseeding?
[22:38] <joshk> say, /dev/cdrom1
[22:48] <joshk> alternatively, a way to specify an arbitrary command on the command line
[22:48] <joshk> (isolinux command line)
[23:32] <joshk> is there like a ubiquity/really_early_command that runs before preseeding that i can sepcify maybe?
[23:32] <joshk> *specify