Questions

Agama allows you to automate the process of answering questions during an unattended installation. This feature is crucial for creating truly hands-off Agama profiles, as it eliminates the need for user interaction when the installer encounters a choice or requires specific input.

This section explains how to define policies for answering questions and provides a list of the question classes you can configure.

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Configuring automatic answers

Automatic answers are configured within the questions key of your Agama profile. This object has two main properties: policy and answers.

{
  "questions": {
    "policy": "auto",
    "answers": [
      {
        "class": "storage.activate_multipath",
        "answer": "yes",
        "data": {
          "device": "/dev/sda"
        }
      },
      {
        "class": "storage.luks_activation",
        "answer": "decrypt",
        "password": "my-secret-password"
      }
    ]
  }
}

The policy property

The policy property determines the default behavior for questions the installer encounters. It's a string with two possible values:

• "user" (default): The installer will use any pre-defined answers from the answers list. If a question is encountered that does not have a matching answer, the installer will ask the user for a response.
• "auto": The installer will use any pre-defined answers from the answers list. If a question is encountered that does not have a matching answer, the installer will automatically select the default value for that question. If there's no default, the installation will fail.

The answers property

The answers property is an array of objects, where each object represents a pre-defined answer for a specific question.

Each answer object can have the following properties:

• class: a unique identifier for the question (e.g., "storage.activate_multipath").
• text: the full text of the question.
• answer: the value to be used as the answer.
• password: an additional field that is required for questions that also need a password, such as storage.luks_activation with decrypt answer.
• data: an optional object with additional key-value pairs to match the question.

The installer will attempt to match a question to an answer by checking the class, text, and data properties.

Partial data matching

The installer performs a partial match on the data object. If your answer's data entry contains a subset of the properties in the question's data, it will still be considered a match if the values for the specified properties are identical. For example, a question might contain { "id": "123", "checksum": "abc", "name": "file.txt" }, but you only need to specify { "checksum": "abc" } to match it.

warning

The Retry value for the answer property could get the installation into an infinity loop. Avoid using Retry if you are not totally sure that the question is going to success at some point. In the future, this problem could be overcome by defining a maximum number of attempts.

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Supported question classes

The following table lists the possible question classes, their descriptions, and the data you can use to match them.

Class	Description	Possible Answers	Available Data
autoyast.unsupported	When there are unsupported elements in an AutoYaST profile.	Abort, Continue	planned: elements to be supported in the future. unsupported: unsupported elements.
software.medium_error	When there is an issue accessing the software medium.	Retry, Skip	url: The URL where the access failed.
software.unsigned_file	When a file from a repository is not digitally signed.	Yes, No	filename: The name of the file.
software.import_gpg	When a signature is signed with an unknown GPG key.	Trust, Skip	id, name, fingerprint: Details of the unknown key.
software.unknown_gpg	When a file is signed by an unknown key.	Trust, Skip	id: The key ID. filename: The name of the signed file.
software.digest.no_digest	When a file is in a signed repository, but is not listed in the list of checksums.	Yes, No
software.digest.unknown_digest	When a file has a checksum, but the expected checksum is not known. This question type is also used for wrong checksums.	Yes, No
software.package_error.medium_error	When a package failed to be downloaded from the medium.	Retry, Continue	url: The URL of the package.
software.package_error.provide_error	When a package failed to be provided, e.g., due to an IO error.	Retry, Continue
software.script_error	When a package script failed.	Retry, Continue	details: The details of the failure.
storage.activate_multipath	When it looks like the system has multipath and if it should be activated.	yes, no
storage.commit_error	When some storage actions failed and if it should continue.	yes, no
storage.luks_activation	When a LUKS encrypted device is detected and requires a password to probe it.	skip, decrypt	device: The device name. label: The device label. size: The device size. attempt: The number of the current attempt.
load.retry	Asks the user to retry loading the profile.	Yes, No	error: The text of the error message.
registration.certificate	When the registration server uses an unknown certificate.	trust, reject	url: The server URL. issuer_name, issue_date, expiration_date: Certificate details. sha1_fingerprint, sha256_fingerprint: Certificate fingerprints.