Hi,

In Ubuntu we recently noticed the following: with busybox 1.27.0; d-i now
does not take into account some preseeding that happens at the kernel
cmdline.

For instance:
linux /vmlinux etc. etc. etc. debconf/priority=critical
netcfg/get_hostname=blah

Here, debconf/priority and netcfg/get_hostname would not be preseeded
correctly. On the other hand, using their aliases 'priority' and 'hostname'
would work correctly.

I investigated this with Adam Conrad and we tracked it down to changes in
busybox's handling of /. It was previously permitted in variable names in
the environment (cmdline preseeding eventually makes it there, where it
gets read by env2debconf), and is no longer acceptable. This is why
'priority' works and 'debconf/priority' does not. It is technically correct
to not allow slashes in variable names in the environment.

Now, how should we go about fixing this? Adam pointed out we could always
just parse /proc/cmdline, but this does not just work on kfreebsd. It's
also possible to consider both /proc/cmdline and the environment; or just
revert the particular change in busybox.

I don't feel strongly either way, but I want to make the solution available
in Debian as well... Anybody have a preference?

Kindly,

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <cypher...@ubuntu.com <mathieu...@gmail.com>>
Freenode: cyphermox, Jabber: mathieu...@gmail.com
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