Move user-setup main-menu entry earlier in the boot
At the moment, questions about user setup and passwords are asked
after partitioning and the base system is installed. When preseeding
most questions while setting the root password during installation
(like we do in Debian Edu and at the University of Oslo where I work),
this make most questions show up very early during installation, but
the user setup show up several minutes into the installation.
For me, it is a goal that as many questions as possible should be
asked at the start of the installation, to make sure the person doing
the installation can boot the installer, answer questions and then
leave the installer to complete its task without further interactions.
To get one step closer to this goal, I propose to move the user-setup
main-menu item earlier in the installation. The package support this
just fine, as the questions are asked in the postinst and the code
using the answers are in a finish-install.d script. We have been
using such setup in Debian Edu for a long time, and it has worked
flawlessly.
I suggest to move it next to the clock-setup and choose-mirror
questions, before the partitioning and base-installer is executed.
Here is a patch for menu-item-numbers.xml to show the change in
context.
Any objections? Anyone remember why it is located where it is?
Christian tried to find any rationale in his mailing list archive, but
failed to do so. I suspect it origins from a time when its operation
were not split between the postinst and the finish-install.d hook, but
do not really know.
Index: internals/menu-item-numbers.xml
===================================================================
--- internals/menu-item-numbers.xml (revision 63408)
+++ internals/menu-item-numbers.xml (working copy)
@@ -57,6 +57,7 @@
2200 clock-setup
2300 choose-mirror
download-installer
+2400 user-setup
2500 lowmem
</screen></informalexample>
</para></listitem>
@@ -91,7 +92,6 @@
<informalexample><screen>
6500 base-installer
-6900 user-setup
7000 apt-setup
pkgsel
7300 palo-installer (hppa)
Happy hacking,
--
Petter Reinholdtsen
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