Installing packages that use dbconfig-common on Debian

[Craig Box]

I have been trying to use Puppet to install the Zabbix server, which uses dbconfig-common to set up its database.

If you don't do anything more than package { "zabbix-server-mysql": ensure => installed }, then you end up with errors that look much like this (snipped for brevity) :

err: //zabbix::server/Package[zabbix-server-mysql]/ensure: change from purged to present failed: Execution of '/usr/bin/apt-get -q -y -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confold install zabbix-server-mysql' returned 100: Reading package lists...

Building dependency tree...

Reading state information...

Preconfiguring packages ...

.: 3: Can't open /usr/share/dbconfig-common/dpkg/config.mysql

zabbix-server-mysql failed to preconfigure, with exit status 2

Fetched 5659kB in 0s (9017kB/s)

Setting up zabbix-server-mysql (1:1.8.1-1ubuntu1) ...

dbconfig-common: writing config to /etc/dbconfig-common/zabbix-server-mysql.conf

Creating config file /etc/dbconfig-common/zabbix-server-mysql.conf with new version

Creating config file /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf with new version

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2).

unable to connect to mysql server.

error encountered creating user:

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)

dbconfig-common: zabbix-server-mysql configure: aborted.

dbconfig-common: flushing administrative password

dpkg: error processing zabbix-server-mysql (--configure):

 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

Errors were encountered while processing:

 zabbix-server-mysql

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

In short, it's expecting that you have answered questions about its MySQL root password.

If you install the package manually, the first question you are asked is whether or not you want to use dbconfig-common, and a warning that if you already have a database set up, you don't want to use it.  It seem to influence the value for the dbconfig-install key.  Therefore, it stands to reason that if I preseed this key:

   zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-server-mysql/dbconfig-install boolean false

then I should get what I want.  However, I don't - still prompted, still fails to install silently, etc.

As this question probably comes up a lot for people installing software through Puppet, has anyone come up with a satisfactory solution to tell debconf/dbconfig-common to just get out of the way entirely?

Craig

[Paul Hamby]

We created a definition in our "apt" module called preseed_package and
then we call

apt::preseed_package { <package_name>:

ensure => present,

}


You can then create a preseed file for that package and have puppet
put it on the host.

From our "apt" module:
define preseed_package ( $ensure ) {



file { "/var/local/preseed":

ensure => directory,

}



file { "/var/local/preseed/$name.preseed":

source => "puppet:///apt/preseed/$name.preseed",

mode => 600,

backup => false,

}



package { "$name":

ensure => $ensure,

responsefile => "/var/local/preseed/$name.preseed",

require => File["/var/local/preseed/$name.preseed"],

}



}



Paul

[Nigel Kersten]

Paul, have you seen http://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/2349 ?

If more people watch that, I'm more likely to prioritize doing that :)

Alternative suggestions welcome.

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nigel

[Craig Box]

Thanks Paul; I don't have a problem getting the preseed onto the
system, it's just that dbconfig-common totally ignores the fact you've
tried to preseed it out of existence. :)

I may have to take this to the Debian bugtracker.

Craig