Public SourceMage Discussion List

[flux <flux AT sourcemage.org>]

Ladislav Hagara (ladislav.hagara AT unob.cz) wrote [08.07.16 20:26]:
> It was my first work with 0.10 branch iso so you can imagine I was 
> really shocked. Yea, you can install systems with only from command line 
> but old ncurses approach is definitely user friendlier. Do we want to 
> attract only hard core linux gurus or even win the hard core linux 
> distro championship? Any possibility to continue with 0.9.6.3 iso? New 
> approach is fine if you want to learn Linux but it breaks you if you 
> just want to quickly install some boxes.

I think you haven't been following the discussions for the ISO :). These
versions lack the ncurses "GUI" because the previous GUI got messy and
out of hand, so we are bringing things back to basic to work out how to
resolve problems. Once we have a known good installer working, then we
will add the face-lift to it, so that the ISO will have *both* a guided
shell prompt installer like it does now *and* a menu-driven ncurses
interface via dialog. We just haven't gotten there yet ;) Please be
patient, and note that this is a test release, not a stable :-D.

> Back to this iso:
> Imho after every "next" the screen shoud be cleared. Titles of 
> particular screens should be placed on the top of the screen, not  in 
> the centre or even lower. It is confusing.

This is possibly a good idea. The only thing I'm worried about is that
there are people who are unhappy when less clears the screen, so
clearing the instructions may boil down to those who like it vs. those
who don't. Making an ISO can be so political sometimes... ;-)

> Comments to some screens:
> 
> init)
> "Copyright 2002-2005" should be updated to 2002-2008.

IANAL :-D. I'll be glad to assume you are one and update it accordingly
though ;-)

> disk-partition, disk-format)
> "/dev/hda" sould be changed to "/dev/hda or /dev/sda".  "/dev/hda1" to 
> "/dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1".
> You can not divide scsi disk by "fdisk /dev/hda".

I don't think this is a problem actually. We state in the instructions
that you will need to know what the device for your hard disk is, so
this is something we actually expect the user to know how to do. Perhaps
we can just make it more clear that /dev/hda is an example to be
replaced by your actual device. However, if we add "or sda", should we
also describe every other kind of disk that can be partitioned? I'd
rather just give an example and let people replace /dev/hda with what
their device actually is.

> 5/12)
> There is some comments "do cat /tmp/selected-keymap".
> This file does not exist.

I will file a bug for this and look into it.

> Defautl fstab could contains also "usbfs /proc/bus/usb".

Perhaps commented out would be better? Also, I'm not sure how many users
will want/need this of users who wouldn't know to add it on their own (I
suspect most people who would actually get use out of it know enough to
add it, though of course I could be wrong).

> lilo)
> Why /boot/.map and not /boot/map? Even iso's lilo.conf contains 
> map=/boot/.map. I always use /boot/map.
> Why only install=text and not install=bmp?

The point is not to provide a manpage for lilo (the manpage is on the
ISO actually). The point was to provide a minimal default lilo.conf. A
more extensive example can also be found in the /etc/lilo.sample.conf
which is provided from upstream if the manpages are not enough of a
help. The use of .map instead of map is purely a matter of choice, which
should be left to the user, but we have to pick something for the
default.

> useradd)
> There is written "you may also change the group".
> No, you must create that group firstly (or edit /etc/group).

This is another case where I think it should be OK to presume that if a
user is choosing a specific group that they will have the sense to
ensure that group actually exists in /etc/group. We are certainly not a
newbie distribution. We are a learning distro, but I think this is a
really basic thing that people should have learned already. If the user
doesn't know that much about how to mess with things, then they should
just go with the default :)

> 12/12)
> Why umount /mnt/root/... ?
> Is not shutdown -r enough?

It's probably enough. Call me (us?) paranoid.

> I remember times when our iso could be burned on small cd (220 MB). Now 
> it is 480 MB.
> No problems, only why it contains "top, gpm, ...". There is openssl but 
> no openssh on install iso.

There are several reasons for this. 1) The size of the necessary spells
has increased tremendously (gcc and glibc for example have picked up
quite a bit of bloat). Additionally, I believe the older ISOs installed
package by package, and had a more unified filespace. On the current
ISOs, the ISO fs and the target system fs are completely separate, so
there is some duplication. I will be working on re-uniting the two
filespaces, but it will take quite some time to get there.

> You should fix /etc/sourcemage-release file (0.9.6.1 on Fri Feb 23 
> 17:44:19 UTC 2007).

I believe this is a symptom from basesystem-0.21 :(. We are working on
making sure we properly clean up before rolling the ISO, but I guess I
missed this one.

> Some screen with network setting is really missing, at least some help, 
> some /etc/network/interfaces.example.
> Some help how to set hostname (edit /etc/hostname), dns resolver (edit 
> /etc/resolv.conf), ...

This should be for after the installation is finished in my opinion. The
philosophy for the ISO is to get the target system to the point that it
can boot, and then just let the user go from there inside their actual
system. We are working on creating a post-install smgl manpage. Any help
anyone can offer with filling in documentation for this is extremely
welcomed.

> Why /var/log/sorcery/activity starts from 20070223. Imho it should start 
> with time of installation.

I believe this is actually from when the basesystem chroot got
generated. I'm not sure exactly how this should be dealt with, so I'll
have to look into it.

> After installation I got only kernel panic. Problems to find root fs. 
> Something with scsi support. I had to boot install iso and recompile 
> kernel (added some scsi driver?).
> There should be prepared also (optional) screen with kernel compiling 
> and installing.

I was afraid of this happening. I have a feeling it's because the initrd
on the ISO loaded the necessary modules to access your hardware before
actually trying to access it. The installed kernel, on the other hand,
does not (yet?) have such an accompanying initrd. I warned of this
possible problem in the release announcement. Would you be able to find
the exact error message?

Thanks for being the first brave soul to test it! And thanks for the
helpful comments! :-D Now we just need more testers... hehe.

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

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