Thanks to Cyril Brulebois’s tip that I could use DEBCONF_DEBUG to debug debconf, I found out the seen flag should be set in order for db_input to pick up the value.
Case solved, thanks to everyone helped! > On Feb 16, 2022, at 9:52 AM, Glen Huang <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thanks for the tip. > > I’m not sure if escaping is the issue. I tried directly specifying the > password: > > debconf-set passwd/root-password passwd1234 > debconf-set passwd/root-password-again passwd1234 > > Still got prompted. > > I tried to debug it with > > d-i preseed/early_command string \ > set -x; \ > . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule; \ > db_set passwd/root-password passwd1234; \ > db_set passwd/root-password-again passwd1234; \ > db_input critical passwd/root-password > > And the syslog shows RET='value set’ for db_set passwd/root-password, and > RET='question will be asked’ for db_input critical passwd/root-password. > > It seems the password type is somehow specially handled and could’t be set > this way? But very strange that it works when specifying "d-i > passwd/root-password password …” in preseed to set it. I’m still unable to > locate the code that does the special handling for password type. > >> On Feb 16, 2022, at 6:01 AM, Geert Stappers <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 08:08:08PM +0800, Glen Huang wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> I want to set the root password to a random string. this is the preseed I >>> use: >>> >>> d-i preseed/early_command string \ >>> pw="$(tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 </dev/urandom | head -c 24)"; \ >>> debconf-set passwd/root-password "$pw"; \ >>> debconf-set passwd/root-password-again "$pw" >>> >>> However, the installer still prompts me for the root password. >>> >>> Setting the crypted password works though: >>> >>> d-i preseed/early_command string \ >>> debconf-set passwd/root-password-crypted '<crypted-string>' >>> >>> Directly setting the password also works: >>> >>> d-i passwd/root-password password r00tme >>> d-i passwd/root-password-again password r00tme >>> >>> From https://sources.debian.org/src/user-setup/1.88/user-setup-ask/#L36, >>> it seems the installer will ask for the root password if >>> root-password-crypted is empty or !. My guess is that in the direct >>> version, somehow root-password-crypted gets a corresponding value when >>> only root-password and root-password-again are set, but I couldn't >>> find the code responsible for that. >>> >>> I'd be grateful if anyone could shed some light. >>> >> >> Completely UNtested, a.k.a. sharing a thought: >> >> d-i preseed/early_command string \ >> tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 </dev/urandom | head -c 24 > /tmp/pw ; \ >> cat /tmp/pw | debconf-set passwd/root-password - ; \ >> cat /tmp/pw | debconf-set passwd/root-password-again - >> >> >> Groeten >> Geert Stappers >> Not knowing how much of the early_command_string gets into log file. >> -- >> Silence is hard to parse >> >
