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Bug#228553: installation-reports: Installation report sarge businesscard i386, new Debian user



Package: installation-reports
Severity: normal

INSTALL REPORT

Debian-installer-version: businesscard beta2 i386
uname -a: 
Date: 2003/01/19
Method: Network, proxied

Machine: Dell Optiplex GX260
Processor: Pentium IV
Memory: 260Mb
Root Device: IDE
Root Size/partition table: Windows 2000 existing installation (initally with
                           no room left for other partitions!)
Output of lspci: unneeded (no HW problems)

Base System Installation Checklist:

Initial boot worked:    [O]
Configure network HW:   [O]
Config network:         [O]
Detect CD:              [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives:     [O]
Partition hard drives:  [O]
Create file systems:    [O]
Mount partitions:       [O]
Install base system:    [O]
Install boot loader:    [O]
Reboot:                 [O]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Comments/Problems:

(french language selected)

The context of this installation is the following:

A "Novice" user (already installed Redhat/Mandrake, never installed Debian,
does not know the distribution) uses the beta-2 businesscard CD with a
confirmed and really highly skilled (ahem) Debian Developer (guess
who...:-)) sitting near her and helping to go through any problem.

No real dramatic problem was found during this installation. However,
I'm under the feeling that the installation wouldn't have gone
smoothly if I have not been here..:-)

The user also ended up with a badly configured X server and a console using
a US keyboard layout. Not exactly hype when compared to other distros..:-)

Network configuration: 

 - The "DHCP before, then static" option may confuse a novice
   user. We probably need to have a clearer template when DHCP fails.
 - Host name asked twice when DHCP fails

General organisation:

There is no clear choice for *Aborting* installation. The user wanted
to abort during partconf because she found that no free space was
available for installing Debian (all was allocated to Windows). She
first tried "Finish installation and reboot"....but this started
partconf again as this part of the installation hadn't been achieved.

The "Reboot the system" choice may need rephrasing as this is often an
"Abort" option.

Partitionning:

partconf/cfdisk is a real PITA for beginners. We definitely need
anton's partman.

partconf strangely warns about an existing filesystem for a newly
created "Linux" partition where I'm sute no mkfs was ever done.

LILO installation:

No more Windows boot is possible. From a user point of view, Debian
behaves just like some Windows flavours-->it installs itself as the
one and only Operating System on the machine. Not even a lilo.conf
editing entry. Bad.

LILO, or GRUB should really try to detect other OS'es and add an entry
for these in thei respective configuration files.

Base-Config:

Too bad we choose french. We went into the well-known console-data bug
which makes any layout other than US unusable with beta2.

We also went into the now well-know apt-config bug which makes the
user loop when adding APT sources. By chance, I knew the
solution...:-)

Proxy setup : 

As this setup was done on an internal network, a proxy was mandatory
for downloading packages.

Choose-mirror (and base-config) should really TEST the
entered proxy information. One french translation problem->the user
did NOT inderstand the "mandataire HTTP" question (this is how we
translate "proxy"). We definitely need to put the word "proxy" in
there.

We erroneously enter the proxy information WITHOUT ending "/". This
made any download fail badly. The proxy information should really be
forced with an ending slash if it doesn't have one. IMHO, no need for
re-prompting the user.

Tasksel:

Debian Jr. means absolutely nothing for anyone outside Debian. This
should be rephrased to something like "Debian for kids"

Further installation:

We choose a few tasks including X, Desktop environment, C/C++ and a few server entries.

I have no idea of the priority debconf was set to (possibly
medium). If this is medium, this is probably the consequence of some
"Go back" choice in 1st stage.

With "medium" priority, the number of questions asked by packages is
incredibly high. A novice user with basic skills understands nearly
none of these questions.

So, she came to hitting Enter very quickly without even reading
screens.... And she was lucky I was near her, thus I could stop her
when it came to xfree86-xserver screens....:-).

We really need to piss off maintainers who abuse debconf. THE DEFAULT
PRIORITY FOR QUESTIONS SHOULD BE "LOW", NOT "MEDIUM" (I know there is
no default....but it seems that, for many maintainers, medium is the
default).

For avoiding this, I think that base-config should re-ask, at the end
of its process, the further priority for its questions and force the
default value to HIGH, if it is lower. The priority prompt should warn
users that choosing anything else than high or critical will lead them
to answer a great bunch of questions.

I will split off this installation report to the appropriate packages
and hereby thank our student, Cristina, who was my victim for these
installation tests instead of working on IPSEC...:-)





-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux mykerinos 2.6.0 #4 Sat Jan 17 10:16:28 CET 2004 i686
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (ignored: LC_ALL set to fr_FR.UTF-8)




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