Unable to preseed language

[Daniel Dehennin]

Hello,

I'm trying to preseed a 14.04.2 installation with hands-off[0] and found a bug in do_pressed[1].

When looking up known languages[2] a $lang variable is used bug comes from nowhere (empty), I think it should be $ps_language.

I started an installation, pause it (thanks hands-off) and add some set -x in some script to debug.

Here are the logs from localechooser do_preseed line 162[3] to 179[4]:

Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + [ fr ]
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + [ fr ]
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + has_choice localechooser/languagelist
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + local RET template value
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + template=localechooser/languagelist
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + value=
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + [ ]
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + return 1
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + log Preseeded language ignored: unknown language code
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + logger -t localechooser info: Preseeded language ignored: unknown language code
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + [ FR ]
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + country_preseeded=1
Apr 29 12:35:47 debconf: --> SETTITLE localechooser/title/language
Apr 29 12:35:47 debconf: <-- 0 OK
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + [ fr_FR.UTF-8 ]
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + grep -q ^fr_FR.UTF-8 /usr/share/localechooser/SUPPORTED
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + db_fset debian-installer/locale seen true
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + _db_cmd FSET debian-installer/locale seen true
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + IFS= printf %s\n FSET debian-installer/locale seen true
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + IFS=
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): read -r _db_internal_line
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + RET=true
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + return 0

This results in not using the preseeded language[5]:

Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + db_fget localechooser/languagelist seen
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + _db_cmd FGET localechooser/languagelist seen
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + IFS= printf %s\n FGET local
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + IFS=
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): read -r _db_internal_line
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): +
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): RET=false
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + return 0
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + [ false = true ]
Apr 29 12:35:47 main-menu[1595]: (process:31954): + PREVIOUS_LANGUAGE=

[0] http://hands.com/d-i/

[1] https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/trusty/localechooser/trusty-proposed/view/head:/localechooser#L148

[2] https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/trusty/localechooser/trusty-proposed/view/head:/localechooser#L164

[3] https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/trusty/localechooser/trusty-proposed/view/head:/localechooser#L162

[4] https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/trusty/localechooser/trusty-proposed/view/head:/localechooser#L179

[5] https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/trusty/localechooser/trusty-proposed/view/head:/localechooser#516

Regards.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Could you please share the actual preseed file you're using, as well as whatever parameters you may be passing on the command-line? This would help in making sure I can accurately reproduce the bug as I test the fix.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

I'm easily able to reproduce this behavior in Debian and Ubuntu, and I'm not denying it looks like there is a bug here in localechooser code, one that we'll address.

However, I am able to preseed the language despite that error message showing up, so I'll further reduce the bug priority to Low.

FWIW, I've been using "language=fr" as a parameter added on the command-line, which is also equivalent to picking French in the menu for the Server CD. I've also tried the same on mini.iso (so, fairly similar to a PXE boot), with the same behavior. In all my tests, the installer *does* come up in french.

Could you please tell us more about the bug? Should we read from this that the resulting installed system does not come up in french?

[Daniel Dehennin (launchpad-baby-gnu)]

I took the ubuntu-14.04.2-server-amd64.iso and follow the documentation https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallCDCustomization and use the preseed localisation from the documentation https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/installation-guide/amd64/apbs04.html

I edited the preseed/ubuntu-server.seed to add the following:

# Preseeding only locale sets language, country and locale.
d-i debian-installer/locale string fr_FR.UTF-8

# The values can also be preseeded individually for greater flexibility.
d-i debian-installer/language string fr
d-i debian-installer/country string FR

# Keyboard selection.
# Disable automatic (interactive) keymap detection.
d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string fr
# To select a variant of the selected layout (if you leave this out, the
# basic form of the layout will be used):
d-i keyboard-configuration/variantcode string oss

I build the custom ISO image and boot it in KVM and at reboot my /etc/default/keyboard contains

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""

The bug I found in localchooser is only responsible of printing a message which should not be printed, so this fix is purely cosmetic.

Regards.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Thanks, that clarifies it. I will fix this (and also fix it in Debian, since it seems to happen there as well).

[Daniel Dehennin (launchpad-baby-gnu)]

I can set french keymap on Debian Jessie with:

# Preseeding only locale sets language, country and locale.
d-i debian-installer/locale string fr_FR.UTF-8

# The values can also be preseeded individually for greater flexibility.
d-i debian-installer/language string fr
d-i debian-installer/country string FR

# Keyboard selection.
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select fr(latin9)

Setting the variant to oss does not work:

# Keyboard selection.
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select fr(oss)

Debugging the Debian Jessie keymap selection, I see that it's handled by /usr/share/console-setup/keyboard-configuration.config.

I pause the installer and put a set -x on top of this script in Ubuntu and it's never called.

Hope it will help.

Regards.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Oh, sure that file will eventually get run; it's part of the tasks of keyboard-configuration.postinst (from /var/lib/dpkg/info).

Are you seeing that these settings aren't properly applied in the installer? If so, that would be bug 1447802. However, there is still the issue you reported in locale-chooser which is a valid issue that should be resolved, so I'd rather keep this bug around and not mark it a duplicate of the other, that way we can track the locale-chooser fix as well.