auto-update needs to accept the ttf-mscorefonts-installer license

[geofft]

We're currently not getting all the updates because ttf-mscorefonts-installer is (re?)prompting for the license. auto-update should preseed acceptance of the license.

[jdreed]

Why doesn't setting a noninteractive frontend cause this fail more gracefully? Like, shouldn't it merely take everything other that ttfmscorefonts-installer, especially since that's a Recommendation of extra-software, not a Dependency?

I'm not sure I like the idea of auto-update doing the license acceptance. I'd rather create debathena-license-preseed or something for this and any future packages whose licenses suddenly change. The auto-updater is sufficiently mission critical that I'd rather not have to push out a new one every time there's license wankery that results in stuff like this.

Also, is there any way we can find out ahead of time when Ubuntu plans to randomly add a debconf license acceptance dialog where there wasn't one before?

[jdreed]

Also, having a separate package will permit the auto-updater to be used by people who don't want nonfree software.

[geofft]

Replying to jdreed:

Why doesn't setting a noninteractive frontend cause this fail more gracefully? Like, shouldn't it merely take everything other that ttfmscorefonts-installer, especially since that's a Recommendation of extra-software, not a Dependency?

It does. It doesn't fail, you just end up with some cluster machines with the MS fonts (Andale Mono, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Trebuchet, Verdana, and Wingdings -- intriguingly, Arial and Times New Roman still show up), which makes for inconsistent documents depending on what machine you're on.

Also, the package installs fine, it just doesn't get you the fonts when it does.

I'm not sure I like the idea of auto-update doing the license acceptance. I'd rather create debathena-license-preseed or something for this and any future packages whose licenses suddenly change. The auto-updater is sufficiently mission critical that I'd rather not have to push out a new one every time there's license wankery that results in stuff like this. [...] Also, having a separate package will permit the auto-updater to be used by people who don't want nonfree software.

Quite fine with me. The only issue is we somehow need to deal with recently-installed cluster machines that didn't accept the license in the (noninteractive) PXE installer. We could spin out these kinds of fixups into another package.

Alternatively, I'd be okay with a tiny core auto-updater that just pings athena10.mit.edu for instructions on whether to reinstall itself or not and how, as a failsafe. I'm not sure which design I like better.

Also, is there any way we can find out ahead of time when Ubuntu plans to randomly add a debconf license acceptance dialog where there wasn't one before?

Short of running a machine/VM in Ubuntu's -proposed (like I mentioned at release-team that we should do), I'm not aware of one.

[jdreed]

OK, this is pseudo-committed in r24974, but there's one more step.

We need a way to kick packages like ttf-mscorefonts-installer. dpkg-reconfigure -fnoninteractive -pcritical works fine, but the question is how we kick them, since we can't do it in the postinst. I propose that license-config's postinst write out a file somewhere with a list of packages to kick, and auto-update then kicks them as its last step (and removes the file, so it doesn't dpkg-reconfigure them every single time).

I'm open to better ideas.

[jdreed]

Fix the auto-update site of things in r24980

[jdreed]

There was bug with this initially, in that auto-update conditionalized the acceptance of licenses on whether debathena-license-config had just been updated, but that missed the initial update. license-config now writes out a flag file in its postinst, which auto-update looks for. So the first auto-update that pulls in license-config won't reconfigure the license, but the next one will. However, that's in auto-update 1.23, which is still committed, because the 3 day waiting period hasn't elapsed yet.