/srv/irclogs.ubuntu.com/2008/07/12/#ubuntu-installer.txt

holsthi!13:43
holsti am trying to get nvidia and ati restricted drivers work from the installer13:43
holstI want the auto-detection to choose any of those two, and then and only then fall back to the free one13:44
holstNow I have this:13:45
holstxserver-xorg xserver-xorg/config/device/driver select nvidia13:45
holstthat will probably not work so good with any other restricted driver, like ati :)13:45
stgraberholst: hmm, I guess you will need to create a script and have it called during the install14:12
stgraberbecause you can only install one of the two drivers (both cary libGL and only one can be installed at once)14:13
stgraberand then update the xorg.conf14:13
stgraberso basically have a script looking at lspci (best would be to use the same code as jockey to detect the best driver for the hardware), then installing the right driver and finally update xorg.conf14:14
holsthmm, not optimal...14:17
holst would rather give a "priority list"14:17
cjwatsonthis is all up to the X packaging rather than the installer as such; you'd be better off asking its maintainers14:19
holsthow do the big companies do this?19:46
holsthow do they install ubuntu/whatever linux efficiently on heterogeneous computers?19:46
hardwirewell paid admins20:06
hardwire:P20:06
holstthat go around installing by hand? :)20:10
holsti generally think that peoplare are lazy20:10
holstand generally, stupid20:10
holstthats what I am anyway :)20:10
hardwireI'd guess most that can do the job are experienced enough to do it efficiently, whatever that solution may be.20:11
holstyes, but they solution is mostly ugly20:12
hardwireI'm not sure what we are arguing about anymore.20:12
holstI am saying: there must be a good way to do it20:12
hardwireand there probably is20:12
hardwireread up.20:12
cjwatsonhardwire: um, that isn't terribly helpful20:18
cjwatsonif you aren't prepared to understand users' problems, please let somebody else answer20:18
cjwatsonI suspect, that said, that big companies doing this kind of thing either (a) buy hardware in bulk and therefore they're not all that heterogeneous, or (b) divide their installations into classes, each of which have distinct preseed files20:20
cjwatsonthere are a number of hooks available to preseed files that let you run arbitrary scripts during the installation20:21
cjwatsonthe best one to use here is probably dropping scripts into /usr/lib/post-base-installer.d/ - those are run after the base system has been installed, but before X is installed20:22
cjwatsonso you can chroot into the target system and use facilities from there20:22
cjwatsonit's not as neat as just specifying a priority list, but it would make it feasible20:22
hardwireI find myself identifying unique information between base installs, then imaging everything after creating a one-off script to set up that system as a unique machine.20:24
cjwatsonso you could key your driver selection based on PCI IDs20:24
cjwatsonthe nvidia and ati vendor ids are well-known, and that's probably all you need20:24
holstcan you use those scripts to feed more preseeing data as well?20:25
cjwatsonyes20:25
cjwatsonas long as they run before whatever's going to consume it, obviously20:25
holsthmm, that can actually solve both the xorg problem as well as the partitioning problem20:25
cjwatsonthe clumsy but simple way is to use the debconf-set utility; the neater but slightly longer way is to do '. /usr/share/debconf/confmodule' at the top of the script and then use db_set20:25
cjwatson(and possibly db_fset if you want to mark the question seen as well)20:26
cjwatsonor you can feed preseed-file-syntax input to debconf-set-selections20:26
cjwatsonpartitioning is fiddly in hardy, unfortunately20:26
cjwatsonyou can do it, it's just awkward20:26
cjwatsonyou have to have a preseed/early_command script that writes out a second script in /lib/partman/display.d/ and makes it executable20:27
cjwatsonin intrepid, there'll be a direct partman/early_command preseed to short-cut that20:27
cjwatsonI might actually try to come up with something more generic20:27
holstyes, I will probably not be done with this before intrepid is released20:27
cjwatsonmain-menu/hook/<udeb-name>20:27
cjwatson(hypothetical)20:28
holstthanks very much for the advices; I have kept them in my /lastlog20:39
holstI think that using debconf-set-selections in a hook is the way I will go20:39
holstthen I can make some fancy scripts that prove for a /NOBACKUP partition as well (my other problem)20:40
holstprobe*20:40

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