Bug#826116: main-menu: The "Installation step failed" screen could be more helpful

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

Package: main-menu
Version: 1.48
Severity: wishlist

While setting up automated testing on jenkins.debian.org, I bumped into
the fact that just at the moment kde-standard is not installable,
with the result that the install stops at the Installation step failed
error screen.

This lead me to notice that the error screen has neither any hint of the
actual cause of the problem, nor how they might find out for themselves.

Possible ways to make this better include:

  1) Mention that one can see the syslog by typing CtrlAltF4

  2) Display the tail end of the syslog on the same screen as the Error message

  3) Add a button (perhaps only on the GTK version of the installer) "Show
  Log" which would then flip to a pager showing the tail end of the log.

I'd favour 2) if it can be done in a fail-safe way that ensures that
at the very least the error message makes it to the screen, even if the
log cannot be displayed.

Cheers, Phil.