Bug#430542: debian-installer: screen updates painfully slow on serial console

[stappers@stappers.nl (Geert Stappers)]

Op 25-06-2007 om 14:49 schreef Marcus Better:
> Package: debian-installer
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> I'm installing etch on a sparc system through serial console. Sun
> machines apparently use 9600 baud on the serial port. The screen
> update method of the installer makes this process really slow.
> 
> The screen is drawn about three times for each new page. First the
> background is filled, then the dialog box is drawn on top of that, and
> finally the whole thing is erased with a third pass when the dialog is
> finished.
> 
> The screen blanking and background drawing are really unnecessary, it
> should be possible to optimize them away.

Hello Marcus,

You are right, for your situation. And you are right for other 9600
baud serial installs that use the newt frontend. The Debian-installer
team did allready his best to avoid such installs.

The used technique checks for a installer-kernel-start-parameter "console=some_serialport"
and switches to the readline frontend, which doesn't use the whole screen.

On a Sun, that itselfs switches console to serial port when no keyboard is
present, has that check for serial console no effect, it keeps the newt
frontend.

Starting the installer with parameter 'console=ttyS0,9600n8' appended,
will get the desired effect.


Hope this helps
Geert Stappers