Question

I’d like to create a package which will depend on mysql-server and set the password to its own randomly generated string in case the server is not installed yet.
I don’t want to have the user put in the password and I’m happy to get the current password from the debconf’s file.

But how can I guarantee that my package presets mysql-server-5.1/root_password before the mysql-server package is installed? mysql-server is listed as a dependency of my package.

Answer 1

You cannot guarantee that. In fact, it is guaranteed to work exactly the other direction. From http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html:

The meaning of the five dependency fields is as follows:

Depends

This declares an absolute dependency. A package will not be configured unless all of the packages listed in its Depends field have been correctly configured (unless there is a circular dependency as described above).

Your best bet is to make your package work after MySQL is properly installed–possibly by resetting the password, if you really need that functionality.