Bug#805291: preseed: Offer a way to override initrd-level preseeding with kernel command line preseeding
Hi,
On Tue, 17 Nov 2015, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Nov 2015, Philip Hands wrote:
> > It seems like it ought to be mostly harmless, and probably ought to have
> > been like that all along (it certainly makes sense to me to have the
> > harder-to-set preseeds over-ridden by the easier-to-set ones).
> >
> > You should probably give it a try and see if anything breaks. :-)
>
> Thanks, doing it right now on Kali as a testbed. I double checked the
> installation manual to see if it had anything to say about the precedence
> of the respective preseeding methods but I did not find anything relevant.
So I did that and you can have a try on that ISO image for example:
http://archive.kali.org/kali-daily-images/kali-linux-light-rolling-amd64.iso
(it's a live image so uses live-installer too)
It seems to work fine (no other regression detected in normal install) and
I confirm that I can override the configuration set in the initrd with the
kernel command line.
Here's the .dsc of preseed:
http://http.kali.org/pool/main/p/preseed/preseed_1.68+kali1.dsc
I just swapped the order of S30env-preseed and S35initrd-preseed.
Is there anything in particular that I should test before committing
the change?
In Debian we don't use initrd preseeding AFAIK so it can't break anything
directly. But it should probably be documented somewhere so that
(downstream) users are aware of the change. I propose to commit this
in the d-i manual at the same time:
Index: en/appendix/preseed.xml
===================================================================
--- en/appendix/preseed.xml (révision 70088)
+++ en/appendix/preseed.xml (copie de travail)
@@ -119,9 +119,12 @@
An important difference between the preseeding methods is the point at which
the preconfiguration file is loaded and processed. For initrd preseeding
this is right at the start of the installation, before the first question is
-even asked. For file preseeding this is after the CD or CD image has been
-loaded. For network preseeding it is only after the network has been
-configured.
+even asked. Preseeding from the kernel command line happens just after. It is
+thus possible to override configuration set in the initrd by editing the kernel
+command line (either in the bootloader configuration or manually at boot time
+for bootloaders that allow it). For file preseeding this is after the CD
+or CD image has been loaded. For network preseeding it is only after the
+network has been configured.
</para><important><para>
Can I go ahead ?
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
Support Debian LTS: http://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html
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