Bug#244901: netcfg: When DHCP fails, the user should be presented with clear options
Package: netcfg
Version: 0.63
Severity: normal
Right now, if DHCP fails to get a lease, netcfg-dhcp ask the user
whether he wants to run DHCP again. The presented options are:
a) back
b) yes
c) no
These map to the following, AFAICT:
a) no networking available, do not configure network
b) DHCP
c) manual configuration of network
IMHO the options are really badly worded, it would be much better if the
user is presented with something like the following:
_Description: Configuring the network
Automatic network configuration was unable to configure your network
card, your card is not configured yet. You have the following options:
Retry automatic network configuration
Configure the network manually
Do not configure the network
I've worded this in a way to avoid confronting the user with jargon as
'DHCP' or 'IP address', but I don't know if that's better than before. I
really feel that the proposed options are better and much clearer
though.
For the record, one of my collegues apparently got confused big time by
this and told me there was no way to keep d-i from trying to configure
the network. That was quite a while ago though, and perhaps a bug in
this regard has been fixed already.
Looking at netcfg-dhcp.c, I guess that switching to what I propose leads
to a major rewrite of it, but it I believe it will be worth the effort.
What do you think?
cheers,
Michael
Reply to: