[10:04] <lawnchair> im trying to install ubuntu (12 or 13) and the installer crashes the same way for both versions: "console-setup-linux breaks console-setup" - has anyone ever seen this before?
[10:06] <cjwatson> 12 and 13 aren't versions of Ubuntu - your choices are 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10
[10:06] <cjwatson> Exactly which image (URL, preferably) are you installing?  Could I see the full log of the failure?
[10:11] <lawnchair> ubuntu-12.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso
[10:11] <lawnchair> i find it odd they both crash the same way
[10:11] <lawnchair> i dont have the full log of the failure but i submitted a crash report
[10:11] <lawnchair> i thought it might be a common failure, i guess not
[10:13] <lawnchair> ill go through the installer again and let it crash... then ill grab the log
[10:16] <cjwatson> console-setup-linux is a Debian thing; we've never merged it into Ubuntu
[10:16] <cjwatson> (It's in the queue, just a fair amount of effort and not high-priority)
[10:16] <cjwatson> So it's perplexing that you would be seeing it even mentioned at all in an Ubuntu installation
[10:16] <cjwatson> Are you doing anything at all unusual with the installer?
[10:17] <cjwatson> For example, writing the image to a USB stick using some special tool?
[10:18] <lawnchair> yep
[10:18] <lawnchair> i'm writing it to a usb stick w/ unetbootin
[10:19] <lawnchair> so yeah, that's def. a common factor
[10:19] <lawnchair> makes sense for that to be the issue
[10:20] <cjwatson> Right.  I blame unetbootin.  You can just write Ubuntu images to USB sticks with dd
[10:20] <lawnchair> ok cool. i'll do that.
[10:20] <cjwatson> It doesn't need a special tool unless you want extra persistent storage on the USB stick, or a pretty UI
[10:20] <lawnchair> nope, i don't need anything crazy
[10:20] <lawnchair> cool, thanks for the direction
[10:21] <lawnchair> much appreciated
[10:21] <cjwatson> The amount of odd stuff unetbootin apparently does is depressing, though :(
[10:21] <cjwatson> I wish we had more time to fix up usb-creator so that people wouldn't feel they needed it ...
[23:48] <jkitchen> question: I need to create a system user during preseed prior to installing a package (to prevent the package from just willy-nilly adding its user with whatever uid it decides). is this possible?
[23:49] <jkitchen> seems the d-i passwd/user-uid thing might be the way to go, but that's only one user, what if I need to make, say more than one?
[23:50] <jkitchen> the puppet package installs a user. I need that user to *always* be the same uid, period. my preseed script installs puppet. therefore I need to have that uid exist during my preseed
[23:52] <cjwatson> I would be inclined to write a preseed/early_command script that writes out an executable script in /usr/lib/post-base-installer.d/; that script can then call "in-target adduser --system --uid FIXED USERNAME" or whatever it would be
[23:53] <cjwatson> I am not aware of any specific facility for this (and passwd/user-uid isn't it, even for one system user), but the general facilities should work
[23:54] <jkitchen> I actually just came up with a really horrible way to do it which should just work: create a package which does nothing but create the required user.
[23:54] <jkitchen> and install that prior to installing puppet
[23:55] <cjwatson> You can do that.  I would prefer the post-base-installer approach myself.
[23:55] <jkitchen> yea
[23:55] <jkitchen> can I have more than one preseed/early_command?
[23:56] <cjwatson> Or, indeed, if you're installing puppet in preseed/late_command rather than pkgsel/include or whatever then you can just create the user first.
[23:56] <jkitchen> also, since I can't seem to find the thing, where are the docs specifically for ubuntu installer? (the preseed file itself specifically would be great)
[23:56] <jkitchen> I've been referring to d-i.alioth.debian.org, but I imagine there are some differences
[23:56] <jkitchen> and "ubuntu installer" on google gives me all sorts of completely irrelevant pages heh
[23:56] <cjwatson> No.  Think of preseeding as setting keys in a database, not as a script.  But of course preseed/early_command can contain more than one command.
[23:57] <cjwatson> https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/installation-guide/i386/appendix-preseed.html
[23:57] <jkitchen> cjwatson: <3
[23:57] <jkitchen> I've been looking for that page for days.
[23:58] <jkitchen> and yea, I figured not with regard to multiple early_commands, but had to check (in case there was like a preseed/early_command/0, 1, 2, etc)
[23:58] <cjwatson> Nope.  But you can wget a script, chmod +x it, and execute it, if that's easier to manage
[23:59] <jkitchen> not a bad idea. we shall see :)
[23:59] <jkitchen> does that page you linked me to cover the available hooks (like the post-base-installer.d dir you mentioned) as well?