[17:41] <michael_e_brown> 7.10 question: we need to have firstboot come up in Chinese for when we ship to a certain, nondisclosed, geographical area. Setting /etc/environment and /etc/defaults/locale seems to have no effect. Editing /etc/init.d/oem-config to source /etc/environment (to set LANG) seems to have no effect.
[18:10] <BagOfMostlyWater> michael: i don't have experience w/this, but i'm willing to try. how are you doing the installations? are you using a custom cd? network install?
[18:12] <evand> michael_e_brown: you may want to email Colin directly on this.  My guess would be that it will involve seeding languagechooser/language-name or debian-installer/locale, but having not written the OEM code, I'm not sure what the full proper solution is here.
[19:17] <michael_e_brown> evand, thanks. We tried setting debian-installer/locale, but that completely breaks our install
[19:31] <twb> michael_e_brown: how so?
[19:34] <michael_e_brown> twb, fails partitioning
[19:34] <twb> Are you seeding the partitioning steps at all?
[19:34] <michael_e_brown> twb, I saw a note somewhere that the preseed text must match exactly the GUI text
[19:34] <michael_e_brown> twb, sort of... just a sec.
[19:35] <michael_e_brown> d-i partman-auto/init_automatically_partition \
[19:35] <michael_e_brown>       select Guided - use the largest continuous free space
[19:35] <michael_e_brown> d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe \
[19:35] <michael_e_brown>        select All files in one partition (recommended for new users)
[19:35] <twb> Please use a pastebin
[19:35] <michael_e_brown> right. sorry. (thought 4 lines wouldnt be too objectionable...)
[19:35] <twb> Have you tried seeding just the locale, and not any of the partitioning stuff?
[19:35] <michael_e_brown> twb, didnt work last time I tried.
[19:35] <twb> OK.
[19:35] <michael_e_brown> brought up the part screen.
[19:35] <twb> re paste, np. I see 4 lines and aren't sure if that's all, or if there are another 98 coming
[19:37] <michael_e_brown> http://pastebin.com/m758c0d2e
[19:37] <michael_e_brown> ^--- the whole preseed file.
[19:37] <michael_e_brown> Requirement: we need firstboot to come up with chinese selected by default (and in chinese)
[19:37] <twb> You're seeding it to en_US there
[19:38] <michael_e_brown> If I change debian-installer/locale, the whole install breaks
[19:38] <twb> You change it to zh_CN?
[19:38] <michael_e_brown> if I change it to zh_CN, it breaks at partitioning.
[19:38] <twb> Oh yes, of course
[19:38] <twb> partition messages are localized
[19:38] <michael_e_brown> So, my idea was to just do install in english
[19:38] <twb> So if you change the default locale, you need to change those strings to chinese
[19:38] <michael_e_brown> (as that happens in our factory, that is ok)
[19:39] <michael_e_brown> and then just change system language in a post-install script
[19:39] <twb> Well, you could do that instead.
[19:39] <michael_e_brown> but that dont work, either.
[19:39] <michael_e_brown> firstboot comes up in english
[19:39] <michael_e_brown> I changed /etc/environment and /etc/defaults/locale to zh_CN and still comes up in english
[19:39] <twb> See this string: "Guided - use the largest continuous free space"
[19:40] <twb> You need to change that to whatever the zh_CN locale uses
[19:40] <twb> Similarly for "All files in one partition (recommended for new users)"
[19:40] <twb> Or try just commenting them out
[19:40] <michael_e_brown> problem being that there are 4 different strings like that...
[19:41] <twb> So change them all
[19:41] <michael_e_brown> twb, problem is that I dont know that would even fix firstboot
[19:41] <twb> For your second idea, to change the locale in the late command, you seem to have forgotten to install the zh locale package
[19:41] <twb> michael_e_brown: so TEST IT
[19:41] <michael_e_brown> d-i pkgsel/language-packs string en es fr de pt zh
[19:41] <twb> Oh sorry
[19:42] <twb> I've never seen that seed before
[19:42] <michael_e_brown> twb, I've been sitting here all day testing it...
[19:42] <michael_e_brown> and now I'm asking for some more help
[19:42] <twb> You said 06:41 <michael_e_brown> twb, problem is that I dont know that would even fix firstboot
[19:42] <twb> So my suggestion is to find out
[19:43] <michael_e_brown> so: from what I can tell, changing the language only changes /etc/environment and /etc/defaults/locale
[19:53] <BagOfMostlyWater> michael: have you tried configuring your locale entirely using debconf after an install, verifying that it works, and then dumping via debconf-get-selections to see what is required for preseeding?
[19:53] <twb> BagOfMostlyWater: that would discard the d-i seeds, wouldn't it?
[19:54] <twb> IIRC there's some other magic command for those
[19:55] <michael_e_brown> BagOfMostlyWater, that is a useful suggestion.
[19:55] <michael_e_brown> BagOfMostlyWater, I'm trying to reinstall now using spanish ( since I can at least speak that )
[19:56] <michael_e_brown> I want to see if doing the install in spanish will cause firstboot to come up in spanish
[19:56] <BagOfMostlyWater> thats beyond me i'm afraid. i wonder where debconf-get-selections and debconf-get-selections --installer overlap.
[19:56] <BagOfMostlyWater> by 'discard the d-i seeds' do you mean the preseeds wouldn't be owned by d-i?
[19:56] <michael_e_brown> the main problem so far is that firstboot doesnt appear to honor the "normal" language selection in /etc
[20:01] <twb> michael_e_brown: ah, I just assumed you spoke zh.
[20:01] <michael_e_brown> twb, no, I dont.
[20:01] <michael_e_brown> twb, which makes it exceedingly difficult to test
[20:01] <twb> That makes sense now
[21:31] <michael_e_brown> so...
[21:32] <michael_e_brown> doing an install completely in spanish does not cause firstboot to come up in spanish
[21:32] <michael_e_brown> doh.
[21:32] <michael_e_brown> cjwatson_, ping
[21:33] <michael_e_brown> did an install in spanish and firstboot still comes up in english
[21:34] <michael_e_brown> funny:
[21:34] <michael_e_brown> did an install in spanish with spanish keyboard setting
[21:34] <michael_e_brown> and firstboot *does* keep that.
[21:46] <michael_e_brown> twb, doesnt look like your suggestion panned out. So, I am back to square one.
[21:58] <evand> michael_e_brown: he's on vacation until Tuesday I think, thus my email suggestion.  If this is pressing I can try to figure out a solution over the weekend for you.
[21:59] <michael_e_brown> evand, it is not an emergency, but Tuesday is a ways off...
[21:59] <michael_e_brown> evand, looks to me like the code doesnt ever initialize the language setting until you click a language
[21:59] <michael_e_brown> evand, *just* finished a re-install so I can look at the firstboot code fresh
[22:00] <michael_e_brown> I'll send an email. I dont need you to work on the weekend on this.
[22:01] <evand> michael_e_brown: ok, an email would be much appreciated, and I'll give it a shot on Monday then.  Enjoy your weekend.
[22:01] <michael_e_brown> composing now... thx
[22:38] <michael_e_brown> evand, did you get my email? It bounced from cjwatson_'s address...
[22:57] <evand> michael_e_brown: yes, I did and odd.  Perhaps trying cjwatson at ubuntu.com and colin.watson at canonical.com might get it through.
[22:58] <evand> my understanding is that the nicknames carry over both domains, though, so I'm not sure why the address you used wouldn't work.
[23:29] <michael_e_brown> evand: http://paste.ubuntu-nl.org/50780/
[23:29] <michael_e_brown> evand, email to colin still not working --^
[23:29] <michael_e_brown> could you kindly forward?
[23:30] <michael_e_brown> leaving in a couple mins. have a good weekend.
[23:37] <michael_e_brown> evand, I also just got word that this is a bit more urgent, as we were supposed to exit devel today, but that is more my bad than your problem because I somehow missed the dates. :(
[23:37]  * michael_e_brown isnt going home as soon as he thought...