Bug#172340: Mostly successful installation log with feature requests
* Sam Johnston
| I really like grub - it has caused me far less pain than LILO has over
| the years and I'd really like to see it become the default for x86. I
| don't really understand the issues involved though so there's no doubt
| someone out there better equipped to make this decision.
I'm not sure if the debian-boot team should take decisions like what
boot loader to use as default -- I don't feel strongly for either LILO
nor grub, and if we offer a choice I feel we've done our best. Both
should work, though :)
| It may have been one of those packages I was asked to install at the
| beginning, which would explain the failure. Of course why those
| packages are there in the first place, I don't know. I would expect
| dependencies to be installed transparently.
It seems like we either needs to set up sources.list before rebooting
(kinda bad), or have some way for udeb postinsts to ask for a package
to be placed in /target/var/cache/apt/archives, and installed using
dpkg -i. The latter would be useful for kernel-installer and such as
well.
| >That's ... odd, haven't seen that one before. I suppose we could do
| >mkdir -p instead of just mkdir.
|
| Actually I know what caused this now - I went back and created and
| mounted /var, so everything would have been hidden under the mount. If
| the installer were to move everything over as per below this wouldn't
| have happened.
prebaseconfig should have failed a lot more gracefully. I also think
we have an instance of the «user puts foot in front of shotgun and
pulls trigger» problem here. ;)
| >Well, without a boot loader, base-config won't boot up, no... Did you
| >try lilo since grub didn't work? If you did, and it still didn't work,
| >that's very bad.
|
| Yes I did use LILO instead, and no there was no base config, nor any
| root password.
That's not surprising since prebaseconfig didn't finish.
| >As I said above, default value for retriever will be there. What do you
| >suggest should be done about the low priority packages? It's a medium
| >question, so if you run the installer with priority high you shouldn't
| >be bothered with it, but I think it's important to be able to install
| >the modules! Two questions, the first asking if you want to select from
| >a list? I don't know...
|
| I would have thought at least some of those dependencies could have
| been installed automatically. If I go to install grub for example I'd
| expect the udeb to be installed behind the scenes. If I go to set up a
| net device I'd expect [at least most] of the drivers to be installed
| behind the scenes. Similarly if I told it to configure via DHCP I'd
| expect a DHCP client to appear. Again I don't fully understand the
| philosophy behind udebs et al and there is probably good reason for
| this to be implemented.
Yup, see first paragraph.
| >>Lacking XFS support. I still use ext3 usually, but I'd like to try something
| >>new, and XFS looks like a good place to start. Any other candidates?
|
| >Put a udeb including /sbin/mkfs.xfs on a floppy and load it, the mkfs
| >menu item will find it :)
|
| That's very impressive, and I'm sure someone will make unofficial
| images containing the offending file but if there was room on the
| official images then it'd be nice to see it there (even as an option
| on the aforementioned menu).
We also need to check whether the kernel supports the file system in
question, something like
for M in /sbin/mkfs.*; do
t=${M##/sbin/mkfs.}
modprobe -l "$t.o" | grep -q "$t.o" && modprobe "$t"
grep -q "$t$" /proc/filesystems || continue
if [ "$MKFS" ]; then
MKFS="$MKFS, $t"
else
MKFS="$t"
fi
done
in di-utils-mkfs.postinst.
| I thought I read that somewhere... don't care much for PCMCIA
| anyway. The fact I get asked about it on a standard install annoys me
| - it too could concievably be demoted to that low priority menu
| (although with more and more people using laptops, tablets, etc. my
| having an extra keystroke during install is probably the better of two
| evils).
IMHO, the «medium» priority should be roughly as verbose as today's
boot-floppies, so if you select medium, you should get questions about
PCMCIA and such.
| That reminds me of another feature I forgot to mention: Install from
| USB Keys. I think I'll file it as a separate wishlist bug though...
I think the floppy-retriever might work for this. It's a definitive
goal (and it will happen faster if somebody throws a key or two in my
direction (no, I'm not going to spend 150 USD to get a decent-sized
USB key) ;)
| No worries. Hopefully I can be more useful and actually get my hands
| dirty before too long...
yay, good.
--
Tollef Fog Heen ,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' :
`. `'
`-
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