Bug#556999: Successful installation - problems and suggestions
Package: installation-reports
Boot method: from HD
Image version: http://people.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i/images/daily/netboot/mini.iso
Date: 2009/11/17
Machine: Older self made 32 bit PC
Processor: Athlon XP
Memory: 1GB
Partitions: automatic partitioning used
Output of lspci -knn (or lspci -nn): not important, all HW is working
Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Initial boot: [O]
Detect network card: [O]
Configure network: [O]
Detect CD: [ ]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Clock/timezone setup: [O]
User/password setup: [O]
Install tasks: [ ]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Overall install: [ ]
Comments/Problems:
1. Problem to boot from ISO image
I use GRUB2 and I had problem to find the way how to boot from ISO image. The documentation describes only GRUB legacy. Please add something like:
menuentry "installation mini.iso" {
loopback loop (hd1,1)/mini.iso
linux (loop)/linux findiso=/mini.iso
initrd (loop)/initrd.gz
}
to the installation manual (and also to the GRUB2 man page).
2. Two network cards confusion
I have two network cards, first is connected to Internet, second to the local network. Both are the same, so I cannot guess which one is the "primary" by name (of course the second one tried...).
Maybe some (optional?) autodetection (try to find DHCP server in parallel on all cards?) can help the user. But maybe my case is rare and it is not important to solve it.
3. HD partitioning
I selected HD and the auto-partitioning (all in one partition) and then I get list of all my HDs with all partitions. I was very confused because it was not clear for me what really changed (why there are so much line, when I selected only one HD) and button "continue" was named "write changes permanently". I spent some time by "go step back" and do it again, read included documentation... on the end I decided to try to continue and next screen was list of changes with button "confirm changes".
I think that this step must be changed. I have two suggestions:
a) change the button "write changes permanently" to something like "continue" or "see list of changes".
b) merge the two screens together, so user will see what will really change.
4. I was not able to select only some packages
I can select only predefined packs of software (desktop, www server...). I want for example only Gnome (not KDE) etc.
5. A lot of waiting
User must wait often between steps.
Current workflow is:
I) user input
II) wait - something download and install
III) user input
IV) wait - something download and install
...
My suggestions are:
a) download packages on the background to the ramdisk (start immediately when network is detected)
b) do things in parallel (download - prepare HD - user input then download - install - user input)
c) try to merge all user inputs to one place (or two places?)
d) merge regional settings to one place (two screens?, do not ask two times for keyboard settings)
e) decrease size of the packages (lzma compression?)
Thank you for your work,
TonyMi
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