Re: woody : X install
On Mon, 2002-10-21 at 18:21, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 05:21:00PM -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> > Speaking with my Debian Desktop hat on, I would prefer it if you took
> > the approach of just trying what the autodetection tools said, and only
> > if that fails, offer the user a choice of options.
>
> The Debconf spec won't let me do that. If DEBIAN_PRIORITY is "low", I
> need to grind to a halt and wait for the user to confirm, e.g., the
> usage of the "XFree86" server and "tdfx" driver for his Voodoo3 3000
> card.
I am not worried about what happens when the debconf priority is "low".
The Debian Desktop will for sure default to at least "high".
> > If the autodetection tools give incorrect information, then that's a
> > bug in those tools we should fix. If the X server doesn't get enough
> > information from the autodetection tools, then we should fix that.
>
> I agree, but there is simply no way to completely eliminate the
> interactivity, *even if* the autodetection tools work perfectly, and
> still play the Debconf game.
Ok, here's the way I see things happening. We use discover and friends
to populate the debconf database, like you do now in the xserver-xfree86
.config script. We only ask the user to confirm at a priority of
"low". The default for the confirm question is "yes".
After XFree86 is installed, if it succeeds (as we should strive to make
sure it does for as many possible setups as we can), then we're all
good.
Now, if it fails, we touch a file like
/etc/X11/x-server-autoconfiguration-failed, and use curses to prompt the
user with something like:
"The graphics system (X server) failed to start:
[ include contents of tail -8 /var/log/XFree86.0.log ]
Do you want to rerun the configuration wizard?"
If they say yes, we exec "dpkg-reconfigure --plow --priority=low
xserver-xfree86". After this, we try to start X again. If it succeeds,
we rm /etc/X11/x-server-autoconfiguration-failed, and again we're good.
If it fails, then we just give up, inform the user appropriately, and
touch a file like /etc/X11/x-server-unconfigured. Login managers like
GDM can look for this file, and refuse to start if it exists.
If they say no to the "run configuration wizard" question, we just touch
that x-server-unconfigured file.
> If we want to discuss this more we should move over to debian-x.
Ok, I'll subscribe.
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