[pkg-fso-maint] Bug#592032: Bug#592032: please increase the priority of the nodm/enabled debconf question to high

[Gaudenz Steinlin]

Excerpts from Enrico Zini's message of Son Aug 08 05:16:04 -0400 2010:
> On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 09:04:14PM -0400, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
> 
> > Currently the debconf question about enabling nodm is only shown at
> > medium priority. This means that it will not be shown by default. 
> > 
> > Thibaut Girka, my GSoC student, is currently preparing a smartphone task
> > which will include nodm. On smartphones the users most probably want to
> > enable nodm. Therefore this question should be shown on default priority
> > installs.
> > 
> > I think the question should not only have priority high for smartphones
> > but for all installations. I already think it's kind of strange to not
> > enable a package by default, although I understand the reasons for doing
> > it the way it currently is. But if a user installs nodm in most cases he also
> > wants to run it. Therefore he should at least be given to open to enable
> > it at install time.
> 
> Right. Thanks for opening this, the issue is indeed up for discussion.
> The original idea was that nodm would be turned on via debconf
> preseeding. Ideally a foo task should be able to preseed custom debconf
> defaults for packages, at least at installer time.

AFAIK there is currently no easy facility available to do task
specific preseeding in tasksel. At least I did not find any
information or and example on how to do it.

Preseeding is possible in the preseeding file that is used by d-i to
configure network the network. But adding task specific information
there seems wrong to me. A user might well choose to not install the
smartphone task and if in a later stage we get the graphical installer
working on the freerunner, no preseeding is necessary anymore.

> I also want to avoid nodm's questions to appear in preconfigured
> installation tasks; that is, I'd like to avoid that when the debian
> freerunner installer runs it gets stopped by nodm asking the debconf
> question at a higher priority.

That's a valid concern. The only option to do this without preseeding
is to have the question defaulting to yes (at least on the
freerunner). 

> I guess most custom installers that make use of preseeding are going to
> run at priority critical so are not affected by questions at priority
> high, so that is a non-issue. And it's probably fair that if someone
> installs nodm by hand gets asked the tricky question of whether to run
> it.
> 
> With this in mind, I am fine going both ways: I am mostly writing this
> to make sure you know of the background thoughts so far. If you tell me
> it does indeed make sense to have it at high, I'll prepare a new upload
> asap.

If there is a facility to do task specific preseeding I'm fine with
the current state. If not I'd prefer the question to be of priority
"high" and with a default of yes for now.

Gaudenz

--
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Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
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