[CentOS] Problems with firstboot in CentOS 5

Thu Oct 16 22:11:09 UTC 2008
Alfred von Campe <alfred at von-campe.com>

Yesterday I wrote:

> I'm trying to customize the firstboot process in CentOS 5 and have  
> come across a few issues that are driving me nuts.  I'm sure they  
> are all upstream issues, but I don't have a RHEL 5 system to verify  
> them.  I had these customizations working in CentOS 4, but things  
> that used to work then don't work now.
>
> The main problem is that you can't validate user input.  This  
> problem can be easily seen in the firstboot "Create User" module.   
> If you are in this screen, deliberately enter mismatched  
> passwords.  You will get a warning that the passwords do not match,  
> but when you click OK to dismiss the warning you are taken to the  
> next screen.  In CentOS 4, firstboot would stay at the current  
> screen until all user input had been validated.  If you look at the  
> underlying Python code, when you returned "None" from the apply  
> method it would not exit the module in CentOS 4, but it does in  
> CentOS 5.
>
> I also can't get the firstboot Display module to load.  It ships  
> with "skipme = True", but setting it to false or removing that line  
> altogether does not show the module.  It appears to me that there a  
> lots of issues with firstboot in CentOS 5.  Actually, in my  
> environment (~40 desktops), CentOS 5 has been far less stable than  
> CentOS 4 (mostly Gnome issues with Terminal windows crashing and  
> window "flickering").  I've reported some of these issues before on  
> this list.  My servers seem to be rock stable, though.
>
> Anyway, for now I will have to live with these issues.  Can I  
> report these issues in the Red Hat bugzilla database or do I need  
> to be a RHN subscriber to report bugs against RHEL5?  I suspect  
> (but have not verified) that these issues have been addressed in  
> Fedora already.

Has anyone seen these issues?  Is anybody using firstboot (or care  
about it)?  If there is there a better forum where I can go for  
firstboot questions, please let me know.  Ideally, I would like the  
upstream provider to acknowledge this issue and include a fix in the  
next update release, but how can I best make that happen?

Alfred