Upgrade of grub-pc during install fails

[Jill Rouleau]

When installing with a dist-upgrade included in the preseed, grub-pc upgrade causes install to fail since the trusty/grub-pc around 5/13. So far can reliably reproduce on Dell (R620, R630, R730) but not HP or Supermicro.

If grub-pc is held, or no dist-upgrade, install succeeds. Upgrading grub-pc after boot shows legacy grub present, with menu.lst for /boot/grub.. Upgrading prompts for install partition which seems to be where the failure is when upgrading during maas-curtin. HWE install also fails. Logs attached taken from ephemeral boot with dist-upgrade in the preseed.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Hi,
 I'd like 2 bits of info:
a.) I'd like to get a run logged with verbosity increased.
b.) change your config to so that you're running the dist-upgrade like this:
   curtin in-target env DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get --option=Dpkg::Options::=--force-confold \
       --option=Dpkg::options::=--force-unsafe-io --assume-yes
 rather than this:
    curtin config in-target apt-get --assume-yes dist-upgrade

I suspect 'b' will solve your install failure, but may result in a sytem that doesnt boot properly.

== to run with increased verbosity ==
You can do this in older versions of curtin (less than bzr rev 243) only by changing 'curtin/pack.py' on the maas region controller.
   To do that, in 'pack_install' method, just change:
      command = ["curtin", "install"]
  to
      command = ["curtin", "-vvv", "install"]

In newer version of curtin, you can simply change config that is passed to curtin (such as where you're running 'dist-upgrade' from). The config just looks like:
verbosity: 3

[Jill Rouleau (jillrouleau)]

Hey, sorry for the delay, have run into other problems with the current deploy setting me back. So far 'b' does seem to be doing the trick.

It seems like it would make sense for curtin to set ENV noninteractive as it really isn't possible to interact directly with the running curtin, isn't it?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for MAAS because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Jill Rouleau (jillrouleau)]

We're continuing to run into this with package updates that incorporate a TUI. If curtin could run non-interactive by default this would hugely simplify our preseeds.

[Jill Rouleau (jillrouleau)]

As the root cause of this issue is still that curtin does not default to non-interactive, potentially affecting nearly any package, re-opening. If it should be refiled against curtin under a new bug please let me know.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

I consider 'system-upgrade' as the fix for this.
Either add config that does:
 system_updgrade: enabled: True
or run
 curtin system-upgrade
as a late_command

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

This bug is believed to be fixed in curtin in 17.1. If this is still a problem for you, please make a comment and set the state back to New

Thank you.