Slow redraws in the debootstrap stage
Hallo,
during the "install base system" step in d-i, i.e. while debootstrap
is running, there is one annoying effect. The newt frontend redraws
the whole status box (the progress bar and the text about which file
is retrieved respective validated currently) very often (i.e. twice
for each package in many cases). This is caused by the fact that the
"retrieving"-lines are longer than the "validating"-lines and so they
wrap into the next line, which causes the newt frontend to redraw a
larger bounding box. When the next file is retrieved, the line is
shorter again, so a smaller bounding box is redrawn again. The
redrawing itself first overwrites the whole bounding box with the blue
background and then overwrites the blue background again with a new
bounding box.
This probably does not matter much on a PC text console, where it
goes fast and is probably hardly noticed. If you use the installer on
a serial console with 9600 bits per second (standard for many systems
with serial console), each redraw takes a very long time and in
addition gives the user an annoyingly flashy impression.
Would it be possible to make the bounding box constant size (one or
two lines higher than it is now) and keep that, so that only the
content needs to be redrawn on each step and not the whole background
and the whole bounding box?
Another thing which is perhaps not possible otherwise but nonetheless
not really nice for the user, is that there is no finer progress
indication after the packages have been downloaded. What is shown
here are the following steps: 0%, 20%, 47% and 75%. On a slow machine
each of them takes several minutes during which there is no visible
feedback for the user. Could that be changed?
Another thing which happens for me on a serial console is that the
main-menu that is drawn after installation of the base system (on
priority medium) is drawn broken (broken borders, wrong line
wrapping). I am not sure whether this really is a problem of the
frontend or of my hardware, so I would like to know if somebody else
experiences this when running with serial console.
Regards,
Karsten
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