Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Remko van der Vossen <wich AT stack.nl>]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 09:15:20PM -0400, flux wrote:
> 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.

Personally I prefer a shell like this, it's effectively how I've
installed SMGL these past years, just grab $random live CD, download a
recent SMGL chroot and untar to a freshly partitioned and formatted
disk, simple, easy and effective. Though of course for someone like me
simply being able to get a shell and knowing where the tarball is would
be enough, not even a guided prompt would be needed.

But yeah, I can definately see how a dialog driven installer would be a
benefit, the problem however is that you need to think for the user and
catch every problem and account for every possible case, i.e. way more
work than a guided installer like this.

> > 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... ;-)

I think you should see this guided prompt specifically for newer and
less experienced users, so the clearer it is the better. As I already
said, for someone like me and probably many other mages a prompt, the
right tools at hand an knowing where the tarball is is enough. But it's
not really about us, and of course just supplying a command 'shell' to
give those who want it a simple unguided shell would suffice.

But still, you'll only get to see the installer once for every install
so its not important really if you rub a couple of mages, as long as the
installed system is what we all want. I definately feel we should think
of the new users as far as the installer itself is concerned and not us,
we should be able to bear a little discomfort in the installer if it
brings us new users. However it is still important that the installer
reflects who we are, it is of no use 'luring' new people to SMGL with
some shiny installer if all those people just end up throwing it away
because it's not for them.

> > 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 ;-)

This has not really anything to do with IANAL, anything a person or
group produces has copyright, but in some nations you have to claim the
copyright by adding a copyright notice like this.

> > 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).

We've had the issue of what to put and what not to put into fstab
before. I think it would be a good idea to include a smgl dir in
/usr/share/doc with various example configuration files like fstab and
some documentation how to use SMGL, perhaps simply some html dumps of
the wiki. Then simply refer to the example in a comment in /etc/fstab.
That would satisfy the needs for those wo want examples without
cluttering the config file itself or the /etc directory as some have
observed.

> > 12/12)
> > Why umount /mnt/root/... ?
> > Is not shutdown -r enough?
> 
> It's probably enough. Call me (us?) paranoid.

How about using sync instead of umount? Then everything is definately written 
to
disk and no mounts will be forgotten and you don't have the problem of
unmountable filesystems which you'd have when using umount -a...

> > 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.

I consider it a good thing to simply have a tarball of the whole system,
as I have said above I prefer to simply have a shell and a tarball
nothing else.

> > 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.

Yes I agree, this can be handled after boot, no need to do this in the
install phase itself.

> > 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.

I'd say just put an empty file there.

> > 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?

Hmmn, that is quite annoying. I personally don't like initrd and those
kind of things, if I can do without I'd prefer it. So for me I'd find it
quite annoying if the installer would install an initrd by default. I'd
rather just use a chroot tarball if there was an initrd installed by the
installer.

Remko van der Vossen.

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