Re: late_command not late enough? (also: partman-nfs)
Hello Brian,
Anything of use at
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2013/05/msg01167.html ?
Thanks for the link.
Basically: yes and no. The core issue is that late_command is run early
(07) in the long line of finish.d scripts. partman (20s I believe),
netcfg (50's I think), and baseinstaller all run afterwards, forcing me
(and others) to resort to unseemly workarounds.
I did solve my problems though, via two hacky methods (that I am /not/
proud of).
For networking, I do the following:
apt-install curl ; \
in-target mkdir -p /etc/network ; \
in-target curl -o /etc/network/interfaces
tftp://10.0.0.254/install_interfaces ; \
in-target chmod 644 /etc/network/interfaces ; \
cp /target/etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces ; \
Here I download (from the tftp server I am netbooting from) a copy of
the interfaces file I'd like to use. Since curl is not available in the
installer environment, I download the file in the target environment.
I don't need to worry about 55netcfg-copy-config since it exits early in
its script (since I am not using NM). However, baseinstaller will copy
the installer's /e/n/i file into the install environment, so I
preemptively copy the newly downloaded interfaces file over the
installer's /e/n/i file. Thus overwriting the installer's /e/n/i file
before it overwrites mine.
Yes, this is ass-backwards.
The NFS mount, I'm afraid, is even worse:
rm /usr/lib/finish-install.d/55netcfg-copy-config ; \
echo "#! /bin/sh" > /usr/lib/finish-install.d/55netcfg-copy-config ; \
echo "set -e" >> /usr/lib/finish-install.d/55netcfg-copy-config ; \
echo "echo '10.0.0.254:/home /home nfs _netdev 0 0' >>
/target/etc/fstab" >> /usr/lib/finish-install.d/55netcfg-copy-config ; \
chmod 755 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/55netcfg-copy-config ;
Since I know that I don't need 55netcfg-copy-config (and it runs after
partman), I choose to overwrite it. I cannot make my own sanely-named
script to go into the finish.d folder (without creating a udeb) because
the list of files in that folder is created before late_command is run.
Thus I must reuse an existing script's name. 55netcfg-copy-config is
that script.
My generated script simply appends the target's fstab.
So... doing things this way has caused a small part of my soul to die. I
don't have a good idea of how to solve the networking situation more
elegantly (any suggestions?), but I do know that writing a partman-nfs
was discussed long ago. If it's still needed, I'm inspired to have a go
at writing it -- even if it is only used for preseeding. Unfortunately,
I won't have time for this for at least a few weeks (hence the pressure
to resort to these hacks -- for the meantime).
I am mostly interesting in creating partman-nfs if it has a chance to be
used by others and accepted into Debian. If it is the wise wisdom of the
Debian boot team that a partman-nfs is not wanted, then I may just go
for a custom, internal udeb that just plops a script into finish.d.
I'm new to the installer environment, so any pointers or tips for
developing and debugging a udeb will also be very helpful.
---Alex
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