Re: d-i preseed/late_command and interactive scripts.

["Ryan Braun [ADS]" <ryan.braun@ec.gc.ca>]

On Tuesday 29 July 2008 17:52, Ryan Braun [ADS] wrote:
> I have a dialog driven configuration script I want to use to configure
> several aspects of the install.  The preseed works for the majority of the
> install, all the apps get installed,  then it doesn't seem to want to run
> the dialog script.
>
> I'm not sure if there is an issue with scripts that require user input ( I
> kind of recall reading somewhere this was an issue ).
>
> Here is the line from  my preseed file.
>
> d-i preseed/late_command string cp -R /cdrom/ads/sitechooser
> /target/var/opt/; in-target /bin/sh /var/opt/sitechooser/sitechooser >
> /root/log 2> /root/error
>
> I can see that the directory tree sitechooser is getting copied into the
> target at /var/opt/sitechooser,  but it seems like the script never gets
> run. And there doesn't seem to be any script output to /root/log or
> /root/error . I've added dialog to the preseed so the package is installed
> in the target, and if I drop to a terminal window before the final reboot, 
> I can chroot /target;/var/opt/sitechooser/sitechooser and the script will
> fun fine.

I finally got some feedback from the script,  the error I'm getting is 

Error opening terminal: bterm

Upon googling,  I got this little nugget from  
http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/powerpc/install.txt.en

debian-installer/framebuffer

    Some architectures use the kernel framebuffer to offer installation in a
    number of languages. If framebuffer causes a problem on your system you 
can
    disable the feature by the parameter debian-installer/framebuffer=false.
    Problem symptoms are error messages about bterm or bogl, a blank screen, 
or
    a freeze within a few minutes after starting the install.

Of course thats for ppc,  but I figured it could also be the fb in my case.  
So I booted the installer with fb=false.  Again the system installs 
everything fine.  Once it comes to the end,  I can see on d-i's dialog screen 
Running preseed... and it stalls at 22%.  I hop down to a terminal window,  
and I can see that the script is running,  and likely looking for input on 
some unknown tty.

So,  is it possible to have my dialog script run in-target with the user able 
to make selections from the script?  Or do I need to instead have some kind 
of /etc/init.d/firstrun type setup for them to configure it on first bootup?  
The script configures alot of critical settings,  hostname, network configs,  
various app configs and backed up /etc/ configs and on and on.

Ryan