Re: New installation program(s)?
On Mon, Jul 19, 1999 at 12:02:24PM +0100, Enrique Zanardi wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 14, 1999 at 01:58:22PM -0300, Lalo Martins wrote:
>
> [...]
> > NU keyboard layout (is there some way to detect this?)
>
> If you configure the keyboard this late, how may the user answer the
> questions before this step?.
Uh. My mistake :-) I was thinking about details like the
location of accents etc, but of course if the keyboard isn't
qwerty the problem gets a lot bigger.
What I thought is, XF86Setup-like, a picture of the keyboard
would help a lot.
Well. Of all questions asked before kbd layout (language, video,
mouse, location), only video is likely to need typing; the
others are a matter of choosing between options. Perhaps this
could be done regardless of kbd layout?
As for video, I don't know... sorry :-)
Either we find a way to do this or, of course, get the keyboard
layout earlier, without graphic help. It's a matter of which is
less trouble (_for the user_, not for us) - choosing kbd layout
by name, or setting up video without typing.
For setting up kbd without graphic mode:
- this may not be as hard as it seems on newbies, since it
will be done after language selection - so we list the
choices in the chosen language, and perhaps limit them to
the layouts available in places who speak that language?
For setting up video without typing (only choosing):
- this may even be more reasonable than allowing typing! Think
about this sequence:
* try to detect board/monitor
* if one of these failed, give the user a choice of:
+ SVGA 800x600x16 compatible
+ VGA compatible
+ (perhaps something else)
* load X (or fb)
* do the rest of the video setup later (with something
similar to XF86Setup)
> [...]
> > NDU drivers. Even in "U" mode, we should ask as little as
> > possible unless user said something like "expert" somewhere
>
> But the user may need some drivers to partition his SCSI disk or read his
> SCSI CD or use his network card. That means he should be able to load
> some drivers early in the installation process. Does your proposal
> support that?
Actually, I was thinking about `additional' drivers - anything
that was not needed during installation. SCSI, network card
drivers or this kind of thing would have to be selected earlier.
No, my proposal doesn't support that, I knew I was forgetting
something important :-)
The currently existing ones are:
- SCSI: when we get to mounting the "live" fs, we check for SCSI
(it may be a SCSI CD). Is there a way to detect the presence
of SCSI without loading the drivers? If not, ask user.
- PCMCIA: this has to be initialized as very first step, because
the user may want automatic network-served installation
(`DNI'). Can it be detected? If not, it could be clumsy to ask
user before asking language. I think this would call for a
boot option (if CD) or a different boot floppy.
- weird network cards: this is another problem, if user wants
DNI. Perhaps allow this either as a boot option or later when
we try to configure the network - so if user wants DNI, give
the parameter at the boot prompt, otherwise wait for network
configuration
[]s,
|alo
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