/srv/irclogs.ubuntu.com/2013/03/06/#ubuntu-installer.txt

chilicuilHi there, I'm trying to automate an install setup, via netboot + preseed, I'd like to reuse the /home partition, is there any way to accomplish this?00:35
clearyhi folks - anyone awake?05:16
clearyjust wanted to introduce myself, and see if there's any life here for support05:17
clearyI'm looking at using ubiquity-dm as a base idea for an in-house distro config wizard05:18
clearyit's going to be quite a steep curve, was hoping that there were some people I could actually bounce ideas off05:18
clearyduring my big debugging session today, I found that if some process has locked the debconf database, ubiquity-dm throws an exception, and ubiquity.conf (upstart) script exits with a return code of 005:22
clearyie silently, so I was finding it would start maybe 2 times in 5, depending on how the timing went05:22
cleary...everyone's asleep05:28
clearyis there a better time?05:28
clearyI'm on australian eastern standard +10/11h05:29
hychenwhen ubiquity runs, it locked the debconf database , you can run another process which uses debconf database , such as apt-get05:41
hychens/can/can't/05:42
clearyhi hychen - yeah I understand this05:43
clearyit gets tricky though, and I appreciate that this is moving outside the scope of "ubuntu"05:44
clearybut if something else beats it to the lock05:44
clearyit still exits cleanly05:44
hychendoes any thing shows in /var/log/installer/debug?05:45
clearyI anticipate this is unlikely to be a situation ubuntu distro will find themselves in05:45
clearyhychen: yes, I've identified the issue, which was a company init script05:46
clearyI'm preparing a little patch for the upstart script to at least not fail silently05:47
clearymy python foo is not up to doing anything deeper in ubiquity-dm/debconfcommunicator05:47
cleary(wrt to error handling)05:47
clearywhile this will provide little value immediately05:48
clearyit may save a few hours debugging in the future for someone05:48
cleary...I have a history of difficulties with patches for ubuntu livecd components05:50
clearyI'm here to try and learn how to do it better/make contact with people who are involved05:51
hychenyou can talk with cjwatson who is involved in ubiquity development. he lives in U.K.05:59
clearyhychen: great - what sort of times does he come online?06:03
cleary+usually06:04
hychenmaybe 2 hours later? I am not very sure.06:04
clearyok, I'm about to finish work here, my nights for the next week are full though. I will leave this client logged in overnight though06:06
clearyas a general info thing, we currently run about 200 desktops here on an ubuntu based livecd platform. My new interest in ubiquity is due to the transition from 11.04 -> 12.10 as our base06:09
clearyI've tried to get in touch with colin before to talk about livecd build methods, but didn't get any response06:10
clearyI'm planning to publish mine, which are based on the pyfll tool used by the aptosid project - forked to use casper instead of their homegrown liveinitramfs06:11
cleary...working through the removal of company specific hacks, and sane packaging is proving the sticking point06:12
clearyit's all part of my education though - my biggest issue is having a community to interract with06:13
clearyI don't know if it's timezones or what, but I struggle to get a peep out of most irc project support channels I go to (with hundreds of nicks)06:15
hychenI usually prefer to use mailing list to contact people do not live in the time zone as mine.06:16
clearyfair enough, as may be apparent from this chat, I'm a bit unstructured06:17
clearyI find I make a lot of mistakes which are harder to correct quickly via email06:18
cleary...something to get good at I suppose06:18
clearyhychen what's the list for this project?06:18
hychen1https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-installer06:19
hychenhttps://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-installer06:19
clearythanks, I'll try to get some semblance of point to my ramblings and drop something on there06:20
clearyI appreciate your time, goodnight06:20
hychennp, :)06:20
* infinity wonders if he cares enough to try to sort out a good way to parallelise d-i builds.08:38
xnoxcleary: sure, if the db is locked ubiquity process will exit with a non-zero code and the upstart job will fail to start.09:57
xnoxcleary: you can see that in the /var/log/upstart/ubiquity.log09:57
xnoxcleary: the way ubiquity is usually customised to become a configuration wizard is either by (ab)using oem-config mode of ubiquity (where the install has finished already and the end user is customizing their own machine)09:58
xnoxcleary: or by writting additional ubiquity plugins and rebuilding the cd with updated ubiquity.09:58
xnoxcleary: the easiest way to update the livecd is to extract and bindmount the squashfs from the cd, chroot into it, make any changes one needs and the remaster the squshfs and the cd.09:59
xnoxcleary: it is described on the wiki09:59
davmor2Hey guys this mornings cd the Who are you? page isn't accepting text entry12:34
davmor2nor is the Keyboard layout page12:37
davmor2cjwatson: whose best to talk to about this now?12:42
cjwatsonNot sure, let me see if I have time to sync an image before UDS starts12:45
xnoxdavmor2: is that on nexus7?12:45
xnoxdavmor2: or on desktop?12:45
xnoxthere are bugs with compiz/ubiquity/onboard stealing focus from each other and hence not typing properly12:46
davmor2xnox, cjwatson: Desktop Raring 64bit, On a Lenovo Y580 ideapad, with secureboot and UEFI, selecting the install option from the efi menu.  I have a video of what I get uploading currently I'll share it in a minute12:47
davmor2I'll try a desktop and install from there next12:48
xnoxdavmor2: if you can get internet up, it would be nice for you to try to install metacity and then stop lightdm from tty1 and start ubiquity job again. To see if there is keyboard input when running under metacity instead of compiz.12:49
davmor2xnox: so drop into tty install metacity, then sudo service lightdm stop, and then do I need to start metacity or just run ubiquity?12:52
xnoxdavmor2: stop lightdm; stop ubiquity; pkill -9 X; apt-get install metacity; start ubiquity12:53
davmor2xnox, cjwatson: http://ubuntuone.com/7OWyqUhmkKeS64gopn5HoQ that's the video12:53
davmor2xnox: right give me a couple of seconds then12:54
davmor2xnox: bingo that's worked now13:01
=== ara_ is now known as ara
xnoxdavmor2: cjwatson: i ponder we should revert to metacity for now in raring and eventually switch to mir.13:14
davmor2xnox, cjwatson: do you want me to file a bug for this?13:15
xnoxdavmor2: bug 109305013:15
ubot2`Launchpad bug 1093050 in ubuntu-nexus7 "compiz dies during oem-config and steals the focus so that input fields are unusable" [High,Confirmed] https://launchpad.net/bugs/109305013:15
xnoxdavmor2: do you by any chance have `ls /var/crash/*.crash` something for compiz?13:16
xnoxdavmor2: it would be interesting if you can upload a compiz crash from there to somewhere.13:16
davmor2xnox: meh I have installed the system, the only crash I have is whoopsie (I'm looking at you ev ).  I'll keep a hold of the cd and I can reinstall, but I'm coming down to Bluefin Tomorrow so I need to prep this machine now.  On friday I'll redo and see if I get a crash report on the failed to install system for you13:20
davmor2xnox: or I might try it on a box that isn't coming down to London tomorrow, later.13:21
xnoxdavmor2: I'm based in london. I can come it tomorrow (although I was not planning) to play around with that machine?13:25
xnoxdavmor2: or is that too much bricks to bring in for you? =))))13:26
davmor2xnox: it's the machine I'm bringing.  I'll need to do some work there which is why I'm going into bluefin13:26
davmor2but you can certainly have a play in the afternoon13:27
xnoxdavmor2: ok. Ping me tomorrow =)13:29
davmor2xnox: will do13:29
evdavmor2: whoopsie is crashing on you?14:32
davmor2ev: on install14:32
evdavmor2: please make sure you file that one14:32
evon errors.u.c14:32
davmor2ev: Already known bug apparently14:33
davmor2ev: triaged iirc14:33
evokay14:33
xnoxdavmor2: bug number?!14:35
davmor2xnox: I'm just hunting it now14:39
davmor2xnox, ev: bug #112429314:39
ubot2`Launchpad bug 1124293 in whoopsie (Ubuntu) "whoopsie crashed with SIGSEGV in nm_state_change()" [Medium,Triaged] https://launchpad.net/bugs/112429314:39
evoh yes, that one14:39
davmor2ev: I can file a fresh one if you want14:40
evI think it was fixed14:40
* ev digs14:40
davmor2ev: it says triaged not fixed14:40
evdavmor2: it was fixed in 0.2.1414:46
evthanks for pointing me at the bug14:46
evI've closed it out14:46
davmor2ev: glad to of helped14:46
ev:)14:47
davmor2ev: you in bluefin tomorrow?14:47
evyup14:47
evwill you be here?14:47
xnoxev: yes, he will be.14:57
evwonderful14:59
=== kentb-out is now known as kentb
clearyhi xnox - thanks for the info21:44
clearyregarding the live cd changes, I have a 'mastering' approach for that (I make my own from scratch, per se) - it's about a 4 min build process which is quicker than any remaster I've ever done21:45
clearyfor the ubiquity plugins, an apt search yields mythbuntu-live-autostart21:46
clearyI've also seen the ubiquity-slideshow-kubuntu - are these examples of ubiquity plugins worth having a look at?21:46
superm1cleary: the mythbuntu ones aren't updated for python3 yet21:56
superm1cleary: but they are certainly representative of what you can do with ubiquity plugins21:56
clearysuperm1: thanks for that - having a poke through it now :)21:57
clearys/it/them21:57
superm1cleary: sure.  i also have put a fair deal of work into two plugins in dell-recovery21:58
superm1they're quite a bit more intense in the work they do21:58
cjwatsonsuperm1: Um, I thought I'd done the Python 3 port last year/21:58
cjwatson?21:58
cjwatsonsee revision log in https://code.launchpad.net/~mythbuntu-dev/mythbuntu/mythbuntu-live-autostart21:59
superm1cjwatson: for dell-recovery yes, mythbuntu stuff not entirely functional right now21:59
cjwatsonyeah, I thought I'd done it for mythbuntu too21:59
superm1i was actually just testing them on raring and hitting some problems21:59
cjwatsonis there a bug with logs?21:59
cjwatsonI mean if you prefer to just fix it then be my guest, it's just a surprise that it's broken in a py3-specific way :)21:59
superm1well they're broke I suspect because mythbuntu-common didn't come to python3 yet and can't with some dependencies that aren't python3 yet22:00
cjwatsonAh22:00
superm1but i didn't review the logs closely, just noticed that when i was bringing some of our other tools up to python3 hitting those problems22:01
superm1the two big ones are python-mysqldb and python-pexpect.  pexpect forked and has a fork that supports python3 but mysqldb upstream just says they're working on it, so we'll see what's best approach22:02
cjwatsondo you really need pexpect?  there are often other ways ...22:03
cjwatsonIIRC anyway22:03
clearysuperm1: realistically, my requirements are basic. If there's code available for your dell ones, I wouldn't mind having a look for curiousity sake22:04
superm1yeah i think pexpect i'll come up with something else clever, it was just convenient when it was added22:04
superm1cleary: lp:dell-recovery22:04
clearyta22:04
cjwatsonright, time to not be on the computer for a while, shock horror22:05
clearysuperm1: are you a dell employee?22:07
superm1cleary: yeah22:07
clearyvery interesting :)22:08
clearywe're big dell fans here - we are a large wine company (3 wineries) with their head office operating off a farm in rural australia22:09
clearydell is the only company that honours their next-business-day support options on desktops22:09
cleary...out here at least22:09
superm1great to hear :)22:10
clearythe linux offerings, while a bit meagre, are also something we're actively supporting22:10
clearycan't complain about lack of support, but then not support anyone who does something22:10
superm1unfortunately australia gets grouped with APJ, so you will probably miss out on the offerings we generally make in the US and Europe as they happen22:11
clearyyeah we have noticed that, ultimately it's not a big drama for us22:12
clearyI'm maintaining an in-house distro anyway22:12
clearywe still make a point of buying ubuntu pre-installed where we can - get those sales numbers up22:13
clearyI'm not sure the demand here is even a blip on the rest of sales, but once again22:13
clearywe have to support where we can22:13
clearyI've got coffee to get and training to do - I'll duck off for a bit. Thanks for the chat/info22:15
superm1well thanks for the support where you can :)22:16
xnoxcleary: plugins as in see /usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins/*23:15
xnoxcleary: or lp:dell-recovery23:15
=== kentb is now known as kentb-out

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