ubiquity crashed when preseeding with blank password in oem mode

[Brian Pitts]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

The crash is at InstallStepError in configure_user(). I will attached the pressed file. I'm booting with "file=/cdrom/preseed/910-desktop.seed boot=casper automatic-ubiquity noprompt initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash"

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Nov 3 22:46:47 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.6
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: ubiquity 2.0.8
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity -d --automatic --only
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
PythonArgs: ['/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity', '-d', '--automatic', '--only']
SourcePackage: ubiquity
Title: ubiquity crashed with InstallStepError in configure_user()
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686
UserGroups:

[Brian Pitts (bpitts)]

Changing the preseed to have a password, e.g.

d-i oem-config/enable boolean true
d-i user-setup/allow-password-weak boolean true
d-i passwd/user-fullname string OEM Configuration (temporary user)
d-i passwd/username string oem
d-i passwd/user-password string oem
d-i passwd/user-password-again string oem

prevents the crash.

[Brian Pitts (bpitts)]

Just to clear up any confusion

1) I also booted with debug-ubiquity.
2) 'ubiquity ubiquity/success_command string \' got cut out of the preseed file accidentally. That doesn't seem to affect the behavior.

Installing without a password worked in 8.10. It doesn't normally matter whether or not there's a password since we run oem-config-prepare at the end of the install. At least in 8.10, that intermittently failed to work and it was nice for volunteers who were refurbishing computers to be able to double-click the 'prepare for end user' icon on the desktop without having to remember a password.

[Apport retracing service (apport)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this crash and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular crash has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug #258603, so is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Brian Pitts (bpitts)]

Before filing this bug I looked at bug #258603. Although the crash does happen in the same function, I 'm not certain this is a duplicate. Most of those comments implicate reusing /home as the problem, whereas I've identified a different source of the crash.