Public SourceMage Discussion List

[flux <flux AT sourcemage.org>]

Martin Spitzbarth (m.spitzbarth AT gmx.de) wrote [08.01.21 08:24]:
> Nice work, I like the bash based user interface.

Thank youi! (the bash-based interface is mostly BearPerson's work,
kudos BearPerson :-D)

> I've done a test installation up to the first reboot and want to share
> some notes about it. This iso is great work in my opinion and I want to
> apologize if this seems to be nit-picking. Well, it actually is
> nit-picking, but you asked for feedback and I don't expect anyone to
> agree with my findings :).

The feedback (including the nit-picking) is quite welcomed, and thank
you for taking the time to provide it.

> First of all, the welcome screen describing the back and "next" commands
> is easy to understand. The "list-steps" ans "jump ..." are helpful, but
> I have forgotten their names about three steps into the installation.
> I could rembember "todo" after about 20 seconds of thinking about it.
> An "introduction" command that prints the welcome screen again would be
> useful ("help" is already taken by bash).

You are not alone in having this problem. Others have reported the same
issue. I had already renamed "list-steps" to "steps" in development to
try and make it easier to remember, but definitely we need some
help-listing command. I'm not sure it should be called though, as
"introduction" seems counter-intuitive, as do the names I can think up
at present. The best would of course be help, which is taken. Something
like "commands" maybe? Can I get a consensus from the list here as to
what the best name would be? The vote is on! :)

> As long as there is not much space left on the welcome screen I
> wouldn't mention it, but one or two lines about setting the keyboard
> layout would be nice, especially before setting the root password.

Noted. This is being worked on.

> We could change PS1 to something like
> "disk-format (step 2 of 10)\n root@smgl-install:/$ "
> to give the user some feedback on the progress of the installation.
> Notice the \n newline, printing the status information into the same
> line as the "usual" bash prompt may be confusing to some users.

I like this idea! It's a nice simple solution. In fact, while we're at
it something like "$CURSTEP ($X of $TOTAL)  type commands for a list of
commands\n root@smgl-install:$PWD #" would be even better! Then we don't
need to worry about the user remembering what they need to type to see a
list of commands, because it will be printed at each prompt for them,
and this would only take up 1 extra line of screen real-estate, which I
don't think is a problem. Thanks for the suggestion!

> All went smooth until the /mnt/root/etc/fstab should be edited.
> The EDITOR variable contains vim, but vim isn't installed. I consider
> this a bug, although a minor one.

That shouldn't be. We don't have vim on the ISO, but instead have elvis,
which is linked to vi. I'll investigate how EDITOR got set, as it should
not have.

The issues with grub were also reported by other testers, and are being
solved in development.

> The message "You should be able to reboot now." at the end of the
> installer is a bit misleading. I kind of expect from a source mage user
> that s/he doesn't simply press the reset button on the pc, but we could
> be more clear about it.

Noted.

> The user is completely left alone after logging in as root. I suggest
> we place some lines in /etc/motd to tell the user about setting up the
> network using netconf, updating sorcery and the grimoires, setting
> sorcery options and doing a sorcery rebuild.

We're working on this. There's some concern over what exactly would be
the best way to handle this. It will be resolved for stable though.

> I was a bit irritated that my network cards were eth5 and eth6. That's
> because /etc/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules contain the mac addresses
> of some Xen interfaces. We should remove those entries for the final
> iso.

Ah! I will now hunt this down and kill it with prejudice! I don't know
how this got in the ISO though. I don't have Xen.

Thanks again both for testing and providing detailed feedback, Martin!
:-D

-- 
Justin "flux" Boffemmyer
Cauldron wizard and general mage
Source Mage GNU/Linux
http://www.sourcemage.org

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