casper preseed url not working

[ubuntushop]

When booting ubuntu iso from grub, the parameter url= is downloading (needs ip=dhcp) the preseed file via http but Casper thinks that with the url= parameter that it is netboot.
Same error with preseed/url= parameter.
This used to work ok in ubuntu 18.04 and 19.04

[ubuntushop (g-info-l)]

I think they dropped url preseed:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/casper/1.422
or is there a new http preseed parameter?

[ubuntushop (g-info-l)]

will the http url preseed file parameter coming back?

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

Yes, will fix.

On Sat, 9 Nov 2019, 04:35 ubuntushop, <email address hidden> wrote:

> will the http url preseed file parameter coming back?
>
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> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1849684
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> Title:
> casper preseed url not working
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[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

As a workaround please use the full parameter name for d-i preseed. I.e.

preseed/url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg

[ubuntushop (g-info-l)]

this also not fetch the preseed file:
preseed/url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg
or does this need extra parameters?

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

So there were multiple bugs:

- preseed/url= not accepted as valid pressed key
- url= accepted twice, once as netboot iso and once as d-i/ubiquity preseed config
- in server iso, it meant we downloaded .iso twice
- in desktop iso, it meant preseeding was broken

Everything should be now fixed with v1.434 upload in focal, see diff below:

http://launchpadlibrarian.net/454293849/casper_1.432_1.434.diff.gz

Can you please try daily focal to double check preseeding works for you http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ ?

I will try to SRU casper, but not sure if we will be making 19.10 point release to roll out fixed media. If we don't, and this is urgent for you, you can unpack initrd and patch scripts/casper as in the diff above.

[ubuntushop (g-info-l)]

in focal url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg is working
but preseed/url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg is not working.
Ok, for me.
Are you dropping the preseed/url parameter?

[ubuntushop (g-info-l)]

error on the preseed/url=

Wget: not a http or ftp url

[Time Leow (time3864)]

I can see the issue is due to bug in:
main/scripts/casper-bottom/24preseed, line 72
preseed/url=*|url=*)
  url_location="${x#url=}"
  start_network
  chroot /root wget -P /tmp "$url_location"
  locations="/tmp/$(basename "$url_location") $locations"
  ;;

if you specific
preseed/url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg
the variable url_location will not be transformed correctly, it will just as "preseed/url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg"

however, for
url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg
then url_location see correctly to
"http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg"

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Steven Clarkson (sclarkson)]

I can also confirm that preseed/url= still does not work correctly.

The line

url_location="${x#url=}"

should be changed to

url_location="${x#*url=}"