Brian wrote: > Bob Proulx wrote: > > Sorry. Because you were having problems with this I assumed you were > > using Wheezy. Because in Squeeze this works fine. If you are having > > a problem in Squeeze then we need to dig deeper. Because it > > definitely works fine there. > > Is that "working fine" working fine as in "I have my preseed file in > the initrd"? Richard may not be doing it that way but, as yet, he > has not revealed what he is doing. I have those preseeds on the kernel command line through a PXE network boot. vga=788 initrd=debian-installer/i386/initrd.gz console-keymaps-at/keymap=us locale=en_US interface=auto hostname=$name domain=$domain auto url=http://localweb/debian/preseed-squeeze-regular.cfg -- That is for Squeeze. For Wheezy: vga=788 initrd=debian-installer/$arch/initrd.gz keymap=us locale=en_US interface=auto hostname=$name domain=$domain auto url=http://localweb/debian/preseed-wheezy-lvm.cfg That pre-answers the question keyboard. It doesn't ask the question with those present. That is why I say it is working fine. I previously had it in the initrd/preseed.cfg file but when that changed for Wheezy I needed to move it to a more easily switched location. And so it is on the command line now. > How does 'auto=true' on the kernel command line fit into this picture? That is how I am passing in the preseed.cfg file to the installer. http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/apbs02.html.en#preseed-auto It is still a black box to me. One of these days I am going to need to pull the source and look to see what is happening under the hood. The documentation is a little vague. But as I interpret it the "auto" turns on a module that then reads the "url=" part and pulls in the preseed. > > http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/apbs04.html.en#preseed-l10n > > "Setting localization values will only work if you are using initrd > > preseeding. With all other methods the preconfiguration file will > > only be loaded after these questions have been asked." > > That is very definite. But is it definitive? I have 'auto=true' in mind. As far as I can see "auto" is a shortcut for "auto=true" to enable the auto-install module. > > > I just double checked by running a text mode expert install - that > > > screen never appears. > > > > That does seem like a bug that it would ask it normally but not during > > the expert install. I haven't tried to recreate it yet myself. I spent some time on it today. I don't see any bug there. It seems to work as expected. > With a straightforward expert install the keyboard question is asked. > Maybe something has been added to the command line. How are you inserting the preseed data when booting "expert" mode? I can only think of being able to do that one the command line. For example I can select the boot option: expert console-keymaps-at/keymap=us locale=en_US interface=auto hostname=junk domain=example.com auto url=http://localweb/debian/preseed-all-regular-atomic-kvm.cfg -- Then because it is an expert install it presents the expert install menu. I can then choose to configure the keyboard because that is one of the expert installation options. I think that is separate from whether the right question is preseeded or not. If I do a normal installation with: install console-keymaps-at/keymap=us locale=en_US interface=auto hostname=junk domain=example.com auto url=http://localweb/debian/preseed-all-regular-atomic-kvm.cfg -- Then no questions are asked. The documentation for "auto" says: The auto boot label is not yet defined everywhere. The same effect may be achieved by simply adding the two parameters auto=true priority=critical to the kernel command line. The auto parameter is an alias for auto-install/enable and setting it to true delays the locale and keyboard questions until after there has been a chance to preseed them, while priority is an alias for debconf/priority and setting it to critical stops any questions with a lower priority from being asked. Therefore if it is set on the command line the delay mentioned probably does not matter. It seems like that would only affect things when using a remote preseed file. But I was not able to test this. Bob
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