Bug#688045: Installation report for Wheezy beta 2 installer
Fabian Rodriguez, le Sun 10 Mar 2013 22:26:18 -0400, a écrit :
> On 2012-09-18 18:46, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > Fabian Rodriguez, le Tue 18 Sep 2012 12:51:09 -0400, a écrit :
> >>>> - - While installing the base system more optional detail
> >>>> (when downloading updates for example) could be useful .
> >>>
> >>> Most people do not care about such details, that is why we
> >>> don't show them. If you really care, see the documentation:
> >>>
> >>> “ Error messages and logs are redirected to the fourth console.
> >>> You can access this console by pressing Left Alt-F4 (hold the
> >>> left Alt key while pressing the F4 function key); get back to
> >>> the main installer process with Left Alt-F1. ”
> >> I appreciate Alt-F4 gives access to this but there isn't a hint
> >> about it when it would be useful (specially low-bandwidth
> >> conditions come to mind).
> >
> > Well, we can't really provide all kinds of hints for all possible
> > conditions. That's why there is documentation.
>
> This is not about "all possible conditions", just a very specific use
> case.
That's precisely my point. If we give a hint for that very specific use
case, it means we should do the same for all other very specific use
cases etc. and thus completely clutter the installer with all kinds of
hints, making it unusable.
> At the time I followed this documentation, which doesn't mention
> anything about the console use:
> http://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apa.html
If you only have a look at a "howto", you indeed can not expect to have
this kind of details. A howto is meant to be as concise as possible.
Whenever getting into trouble, a howto is not the answer. The proper
documentation is. The actual installer documentation does have an
introduction to such details, see
http://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.i386/ch06s01.html
> >>>> Odd behavior (not show-stopper): - - Clock/timezone setup
> >>>> wasn't automatic even though a network connection was
> >>>> present
> >>>
> >>> Do you mean that the clock was not adjusted, or just that the
> >>> timezone was not asked? When the country has only one timezone,
> >>> the timezone question is not asked, that's normal.
> >>
> >> Timezone was asked but could have been guessed (GeoIP?),
> >
> > GeoIP is not really a safe bet. Which country did you select? I
> > actually wonder whether GeoIP can even help for the countries which
> > have several timezones.
>
> There wasn't a choice for country,
Which language had you chosen? I don't see how you could not be
presented with the country choice. Did you perhaps preseed some things?
> only for timezones (Eastern, etc.)
We do already have the support for automatically choosing the proper
timezone once the country is properly selected. The information we use
for that comes from /usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab Since that didn't
happen, that's where we have to concentrate debugging: please tell us
exactly how you got to that situation.
> which makes the assumption such information is known/understood.
We only ask the timezone for countries which have several timezones.
People in such countries do know about them.
> Geolocation helps a lot with this.
Sure, and we already do it. When you mentioned GeoIP, I thought you
meant guessing the timezone from the public IP address that the
installer gets. That's broken at best, see for instance the thread here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/743505/how-to-get-time-zone-through-ip-address-in-php
Samuel
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