Re: How to preconfigure debconf values?

[Josef Wolf <jw@raven.inka.de>]

On Mon, Dec 24, 2007 at 05:22:07PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Monday 24 December 2007, Josef Wolf wrote:
> > Yes, I understand.  But as tzdata is installed by debootstrap, there's no
> > way to preseed it before installation.
> 
> Preseeding during debootstrap is probably never going to happen though as 
> its a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: you need to have a basic system to 
> be able to preseed and debootstrap is exactly what gives you that basic 
> system.

I understand.  But then it would be fine if there would be some mechanism
to reconfigure the package non-interactively.

> > > Reinstalling the package _without_ purging it could work.
> > Without purging, the tzdata/Zones/Etc value is left in place, so
> I doubt that the value for tzdata/Zones/Etc is the problem.

Yes, you're right here (see below).

> Last suggestion I can give you if you want to find out _why_ things are not 
> working as you expect them to, is to add 'set -x' in the relevant 
> maintainer scripts and see what actually happens:
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/tzdata.config
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/tzdata.postinst

tzdata.config simply don't read the debconf values.  It simply checks
/etc/localtime and /etc/timezone and sets the debconf values from that
(with a little special handling for Etc/UTC).  The postinst simply reads
back those debconf settings again.  The end result is that /etc/localtime
and /etc/timezone simply override everything else.

> > But I am still not sure whether debootstrap and debconf 
> > are ontopic on this list or whether this list is for d-i only.
> 
> It's borderline on-topic. It is because you're trying to do some fancy 
> customized installation and because most knowledge about preseeding is to 
> be found on this list. It's not because it does not really have anything to 
> do with the installer itself. Guess you've gotten the benefit of the 
> doubt :-)

I don't really get what you are trying to say here (english is not my
native language :)  If I understand correctly, debconf+preseeding are
on-topic but debootstrap is not?