user prompted twice on ec2 grub-pc upgrade from 1.98-1ubuntu7 to 1.98-1ubuntu8

I have just verified that this bug has been present in all 10.04 images. Ie, a grub-pc upgrade of on any of our released images would force the 2 prompts.

This can be worked around with:
$ printf "%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\n%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\n" \
  grub-pc grub-pc/install_devices_empty boolean true \
  grub-pc grub2/linux_cmdline string "x" |
  sudo debconf-set-selections
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

In the original opening of the bug, I said:

| For the first, though, a value has already been pre-seeded, just to an empty value.
| During the image build process, we seed
| grub-pc grub2/linux_cmdline string " "

That is incorrect. Currently, we only do that on maverick or later builds.

Where can I find the image building code?

image building code at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-on-ec2/vmbuilder/automated-ec2-builds/files
of interest to you is probably /vmbuilder-uec-ec2-fixes .

Collin, other interaction with grub and pre-seeding in the images (maverick+ only) is done with cloud-init on first boot, at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%7Ecloud-init-dev/cloud-init/trunk/annotate/head%3A/cloudinit/CloudConfig/cc_grub_dpkg.py

As i learn more about debconf, I see that the following debconf pre-seed info has the same effect of not prompting user:
  grub-pc grub-pc/install_devices_empty boolean true
  grub-pc grub2/linux_cmdline seen true

(mostly, just writing that down for my own reference)

I'm virtually certain this is fixed in both natty and maverick. It affects only 10.04

grub2/linux_cmdline has been there forever, since well before I was maintaining grub2. I'm not sure whether the grub2 package will be able to sensibly do anything about this - your initial preseeding for these images was wrong if it didn't preseed those.

grub-pc/install_devices_empty has been there for a while, although that code was changed around quite a bit in 1.98-1ubuntu7. Your current preseeding looks fine, but as you say it wasn't there in lucid. I don't know how to correct this without a time machine.

Incidentally, there's no point ever preseeding grub-pc/install_devices_empty to false - it will be ignored, and if there weren't special-case code to ignore it it would cause an infinite loop instead. If idevs_empty is False, you should just not preseed grub-pc/install_devices_empty at all.

On Wed, 1 Dec 2010, Colin Watson wrote:

> grub2/linux_cmdline has been there forever, since well before I was
> maintaining grub2. I'm not sure whether the grub2 package will be able
> to sensibly do anything about this - your initial preseeding for these
> images was wrong if it didn't preseed those.
>
> grub-pc/install_devices_empty has been there for a while, although that
> code was changed around quite a bit in 1.98-1ubuntu7. Your current
> preseeding looks fine, but as you say it wasn't there in lucid. I don't
> know how to correct this without a time machine.

Colin, thanks for your attention.
I'll fix this by seeding in new 10.04 images, which are due for a refresh
anyway.

Colin,
  The reason I marked 'fixed' in natty is that its not an issue for the UEC images in natty, because they seed
grub-pc grub2/linux_cmdline string " "
  and on first boot, cloud-config seeds:
grub-pc/install_devices
and
grub-pc/install_devices_empty

You're welcome to leave it open as a general issue though.

Accepted cloud-init into lucid-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

see bug 683890 comment 13 for verification information.

Above should have said bug 683890 comment '3'.

$ dpkg-query --show cloud-init
cloud-init 0.5.10-0ubuntu1.5
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install --reinstall grub-pc
...

no prompts (ami-3413e55d = ebs/ubuntu-lucid-daily-i386-server-20101210.1)

This bug was fixed in the package cloud-init - 0.5.10-0ubuntu1.5

---------------
cloud-init (0.5.10-0ubuntu1.5) lucid-proposed; urgency=low

  * make grub-config code run on instance first boot so user is not
    prompted on grub upgrade (LP: #683890, LP: #683379)

cloud-init (0.5.10-0ubuntu1.4) lucid-proposed; urgency=low

  * add grub-legacy-ec2 to support utilizing pv-grub
   rebooting into new kernels (LP: #671103)
 -- Scott Moser <email address hidden> Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:42:17 -0500

As agreed at the rally last week, there's not very much that can sensibly be done about this in the grub2 packages, and it's already been handled in cloud-init, so I'm going to close the grub2 tasks.