Re: Preseed file not working
On August 31, 2004 04:33 pm, Joey Hess wrote:
> I need you to put the preseed file up in some public place, give me the
> real url to it, try a *single* install, tell me exactly what happens,
> down to the exact wording of the error messages, and the exact content
> of the logs, and let me try to replicate it.
Ok, I managed to get it working somewhat, here's what I did:
1. Install sarge using sarge-i386-businesscard.iso from today (08-31-2004).
Install was done with almost entirely default selections, see full accounting
of my install at
http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/preseeding-attempt-install-log.txt
2. From installed system I "apt-get install debconf-utils" since I need
debconf-get-selections. Shortly afterwards I "apt-get install ssh" since I
need a way to copy the debconf data off the system.
3. From installed system I run debconf-get-selections as follows:
debconf-get-selections --installer > /tmp/installer.debconf
debconf-get-selections > /tmp/regular.debconf
4. I copy above files to
http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/installer.debconf and
http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/regular.debconf, also I concatenate
them together into the file
http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/aruba.debconf
Hmmm, there are 801 lines between the 2 debconf files but only 639 are uniq,
could this be the problem? Will check later ...
I also tarred up base-config.* and debian-installer/ from /var/log on the
installed system, this file is retrievable from
http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/install-log.tar.gz
5. Reboot system to be sure everything is still functional ... yes
----
Preseeding attempt 1 ...
- boot with "linux
preseed/url=http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/aruba.debconf";
- step through all questions up until network configuration (use same answers
as in initial install log), dhcp happens, I get asked to enter my hostname
(again aruba automatically selected, press enter) and then d-i tells me:
- line 1 (Blue letters) - "Failed to load the preconfiguration file"
- following lines - "The installer failed to load the preconfiguration file
from http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/aruba.debconf. The file may be
corrupt."
- at this stage I saved the contents of /var/log to a floppy, the contents of
that floppy are available as
http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/preseed-failure1.tar.gz
- one can see that /var/log/debconf-seed is an exact copy of aruba.debconf so
the URL is definitely being passed correctly and is working.
----
Preseeding attempt 2 ... I create
http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/aruba2.debconf which contains only
unique lines
- boot with "linux
preseed/url=http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/aruba2.debconf";
Ok, wasn't anything that silly, exact same error message (file may be
corrupt), I'm not going to bother capturing logs from this attempt.
----
Just noticed that debconf-set-selections has a -c option, running that on
aruba2.debconf gives me the following errors:
error: parse error on line 248: 'base-config apt-setup/title title '
error: parse error on line 253: 'base-config base-config/title title
'
error: parse error on line 269: 'base-config tzconfig/title title '
error: parse error on line 461: 'd-i lilo-installer/failed '
error: parse error on line 609: 'exim4-config exim4/exim4-config-title
title '
error: parse error on line 637: 'tasksel tasksel/title title '
I delete the corrupt lines (since I'm not to sure what they should look like)
and rerun the installer using
preseed/url=http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/aruba3.debconf
Yay, progress ...
On install using http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/aruba3.debconf I see a
few questions disappear, these questions were not asked:
- mirror selection and proxy setup
- press enter to install grub in MBR
These questions were asked, I don't know if it was because of my corrupt file
or because they will always be asked (I hope not the latter):
- partioning questions were all still asked ...
o erase Entire disk
o still had to select all files in one partition
o still had to select finish partitioning and write changes to disk
o still had to tell it that I wanted to destroy my data
On reboot, I get base-config running (as expected) but it still asks me
questions. I select debconf-seed as the next step in the install process and
it then jumps me to "Execute a Shell" ... I exit, no extra user was created.
Log from this semi-successful install are at
http://www.wehave.net/debian-installer/preseeded-install-log.tar.gz
--
Fraser Campbell <fraser@wehave.net> http://www.wehave.net/
Georgetown, Ontario, Canada Debian GNU/Linux
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