Re: Switching g-i from DirectFB to X11 -- console-setup

[Anton Zinoviev <anton@lml.bas.bg>]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 05:34:42PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> 
> This does happen. At least, with only console-setup-pc-ekmap loaded I see
> "Sun dead keys" listed for Dutch (hmmm, but no Sun keymaps for USA) and I 
> also see Macintosh a lot (which is probably necessary).

This is not a bug.  It is possible to use a Sun keyboard on a PC.  How 
many people are going to do this is another question.  Anyway, the list 
of Dutch layouts comes from xkb-data, not from console-setup.

The old bug (which I hope doesn't happen any more) was that c-s allowed 
the user to select keyboard models/layouts that were not supported.

> > > and AFAIK it does not detect headless systems that don't need any
> > > console setup.
> >
> > AFAIK this doesn't happen.
> 
> You're right (tested). It does check if a keyboard is connected, so 
> headless is covered.
> 
> But AFAICT it does not check for a serial console install (not tested [1]).

True.  If the machine has a keyboard, it is configured even if it is not 
used during the installation.  Rationale: if the udeb skips the 
questions then they will have to be asked by the regular package so 
there is no gain (or leave the system without kbd and console-setup 
which IMO is not a good idea).

> By default kbd-chooser will skip keyboard configuration for serial console 
> installs, but (at medium/low priority) it will still offer the option to 
> configure a keyboard.

I suppose it is possible to do the same in console-setup-udeb.  But 
considering the importance of properly configured keyboard in emergency 
situations I am not sure it is a good idea to make installations with 
attached but unconfigured keyboard.  Even if the keyboard configuration 
is really unnecessary, one or two <Enter>s can not be a big problem.  A 
specific test for Xen or UML can be added if this causes problems.

> The description for the keyboard origin question still needs improvement. 
> Here's a proposal

Thank you.

> We should also consider adding a progress bar while c-s loads all its data. 
> On my sparc there was a too long delay with nothing but a blue screen 
> showing...

When does this delay happen?  After the questions have been asked?  Then 
it must be the following code:

ckbcomp_rec () {
    local kmap
    kmap="$1"
    zcat $ekmap \
        | grep "^$kmap::" \
        | sed "s/^$kmap:://" \
        | {
            while read line; do
                case "$line" in
                    ?include*)
                        ckbcomp_rec "${line##* }"
                        ;;
                    keycode*)
                        echo "$line"
                        ;;
                    *)
                        ;;
                    esac
            done
          }
}

Anton Zinoviev