clone 377504 -1 reassign 377504 mdcfg thanks Thank you for your elaborate report. I am cloning it to mdcfg for your comments regarding RAID setup. The other issues you mention are mostly known or non-issues in our opinion. See below for detailed responses. Cheers, FJP On Sunday 09 July 2006 16:27, Christian Pernegger wrote: > Comments/Problems: > 1) debconf priority is set to high _after_ the install even when > installed using 'expert' > > I've had too many non-working defaults with high, so I'd probably > default it to medium even for normal installs. For 'expert' installs > the default should be low however, since the installation itself is > done with 'low' also. Installation and installed system are basically two different things. If you want a different priority from the default, just run 'dpkg-reconfigure debconf'. The default for debconf priority was fairly recently changed from medium to high, but that is not installer related. > 2) Where has the 'state of the install' detection between steps gone? > The current installer seems to just check STEP_XY_COMPLETED flags, > making it much more difficult to work around deficiencies in the > installer. There also was no sign of a resume capability. Not exactly sure what you mean here. The installer does indeed keep track of which steps have been completed and which not. If a step fails, most of the time it can be resumed. If you decide to go back, you currently do have to manually keep track of which steps you need to execute again. Especially if you go back to partitioning for example (although some steps after that could be skipped). However, you are not really meant to skip around unless you really know what you're doing anyway. The installer has gotten a lot more complex which means that skipping steps and doing things manually is probably no longer supported in the way it was, although intervention still is possible in a lot of places. > 3) Hardware detection was excellent, but ... > > It prompted me to load the 'floppy' module three times during each > install. The box doesn't have a floppy but the controller is enabled, > so the confusion is understandable. Nevertheless, deselecting the > module once should be enough. Known issue. Of minor importance though. > 4) The 'back' functions in installer dialogs doesn't always work > correctly > > Most notably the item 'Install the base system' gives a choice of > kernels at the end. Once I selected the wrong one, but the back button > didn't take me back to kernel selection but before the whole base > system install, which was not marked as not completed. I don't understand this. AFAIK kernel selection is the last dialog in that step, so if you already selected one there is no going back within that step anyway. > Consequently I > had to redo the whole step, including download and install of the base > system, since everything depending on that step complained. > I suggest splitting a 'Select kernel' step from the 'base system' step. It has been in the past which caused different problems. > Similar things, like 'back' just looping back to the same dialog > happened at various points Known issue. If you have specific instances, please report them as such individually against the relevant components (with a description of how you got there) so they can be fixed. > 5) Unable to change the time zone. > > Detecting the TZ based on the selected country is neat, but in expert > mode at least I'd like to have an option to correct the guess. Why would you want to select a different timezone from the country you are in? Seems like 99.9% users will be happy with current functionality and happy not to be asked the question. The few remaining people can change the TZ after installation. > All the 'timezone' module does is show the automatically chosen TZ. At default priority not even that. The dialog was only added because else the step would have no visible output at all at medium or low priority. > Also, the 'clock in UTC' question should have an 'is this correct' > dialog which shows the output of date or similar. We have discussed that at length. Showing the time only makes sense if you can offer the option to change it. Currently we cannot. > RAID / PARTITIONING related > > 1) partitionable arrays not supported [also posted seperately to > debian-boot] Known. > At first I created partitionable arrays using the console, but partman > totally choked on that. After a lot of experimenting I finally failed > at the 'install grub' step. It didn't want anything to do with > /dev/md_d0, even with the install device given as (hd0) It also didn't > copy the grub stages to /target/boot/ because of that. Your naming scheme seems extremely non-standard to me. As indicated before, please provide some references to convince us that it should be supported. > 2) partman or mdcfg for RAID? > > Then I saw that partman has its own configure RAID item, that called > mdcfg without insisting on a root fs ... having two ways to setup RAID, > with the obvious one not working for root-on- RAID is confusing. Which means you probably did not read the installation guide on the subject? root-on-raid is supported for levels 0 and 1 and for others if there is a separate /boot. > 3) mdcfg should support bitmaps > > There is no option to set --bitmap internal for an array in mdcfg, but > I see no reason to create one without. Help improving the quality of RAID installation is very welcome. You'll have to be more specific though as to what exactly is wanted and for which RAID levels. Most of us are not RAID experts. > 4) mdcfg interface improvements > > How about grouping eligible partitions with approximately the same size > together on one line, to make it easier to select the correct disks? Nice suggestion. We could at least list the size in the dialog. > 5) mdcfg creates arrays out-of-order > > Interestingly the three arrays I created got: md2, md0, md1. Not sure how that would happen. I would expect each array to be created as soon as the dialogs for that array have been completed, not delayed in any way. A quick look at the code tells me that is correct: mdadm --create is called for each array that is created before a next array can be created. Could it be that the naming was influenced by the presence of old superblocks? > 6) partman sanity checks too strict > > If I want to partition and return to the main menu without designating > a root fs I should be able to do that. If I want to exit partman > without changing anything I should be able to do that. Instead it > forces me to write an unchanged partition layout, and happily formats > the swap space (again). You can go back to the menu whenever you like. However, you cannot expect the installer to accept a broken disk setup and continue the installation as if nothing is wrong. The automatic formatting of the swap space is a minor annoyance for me too, but was probably a conscious choice.
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