CdBootloader

Differences between revisions 4 and 5
⇤ ← Revision 4 as of 2005-11-04 20:14:14 →
Size: 2119
Editor: 251_220_103_66-WIFI_HOTSPOTS
Comment: misc notes
← Revision 5 as of 2005-11-04 20:38:08 → ⇥
Size: 2920
Editor: 251_220_103_66-WIFI_HOTSPOTS
Comment: more notes from BOF
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
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 * '''Packages affected''': syslinux, gfxboot  * '''Packages affected''': syslinux, gfxboot, debian-installer
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=== Code ===
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incorporate gfxboot and corresponding syslinux patch as above very early in the dapper cycle; patch is in http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-OSS-edge/inst-source/suse/src/syslinux-2.11-16.src.rpm, although it will need to be reduced Incorporate gfxboot and corresponding syslinux patch as above very early in the dapper cycle; patch is in http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-OSS-edge/inst-source/suse/src/syslinux-2.11-16.src.rpm, although it will need to be reduced.

Consider disabling VESA framebuffer by default, and just use VGA framebuffer for graphical stuff; VESA is difficult to support on many video cards and can corrupt video memory to the point where you have to reboot and disable VESA to recover. VGA will only provide 16 colours but that should be OK.

As early as possible, find a few machines that cannot handle VESA (laptops are good candidates) and test isolinux+gfxboot with VESA framebuffer to see whether the fallback code works. If it does, then we can skip the above.
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Move all boot text from debian-installer package to debian-cd, add .pot files, and actually upload our debian-cd to Ubuntu so that we can use Rosetta for translating this text. gfxboot uses a UTF-8 font on the framebuffer so we can even support non-Latin languages.

Summary

The current i386/amd64 CD boot loader (isolinux) and configuration are not very user-friendly. Prompts can only be displayed in one language, and responses must be typed in by the user.

We should evaluate available options for replacements, and ways to simplify the process for the user, including:

  • Displaying a countdown and automatically continuing after a timeout
  • Allowing language selection from the boot loader
  • Localized help

Rationale

Use cases

Scope

Design

Implementation

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

I would suggest using gfxboot from SuSE with some patches from me:

gfxboot is mostly used with GRUB, but GRUB does not work for all computers. ISOLINUX + gfxboot is much more safe to use.

See:

http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/experiments/gfxboot/

  • isolinux.bin - Ready made binary
  • suse-knoppix.diff - Changes to the SuSE binary to behave on failure exact like before.
  • *.iso - An iso to test out the isolinux.bin with the default SuSE theme and show off
    • the features.

Newer GFXBOOT-Packages are available from http://kanotix.com/files/debian/pool/main/g/gfxboot/

- Fabian 

Incorporate gfxboot and corresponding syslinux patch as above very early in the dapper cycle; patch is in http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-OSS-edge/inst-source/suse/src/syslinux-2.11-16.src.rpm, although it will need to be reduced.

Consider disabling VESA framebuffer by default, and just use VGA framebuffer for graphical stuff; VESA is difficult to support on many video cards and can corrupt video memory to the point where you have to reboot and disable VESA to recover. VGA will only provide 16 colours but that should be OK.

As early as possible, find a few machines that cannot handle VESA (laptops are good candidates) and test isolinux+gfxboot with VESA framebuffer to see whether the fallback code works. If it does, then we can skip the above.

CD timeout was removed due to [http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1290 bug #1290], but it was a bug that the timeout kicked in even after pressing a key; this bug has apparently been fixed. We will restore the timeout and set it to something higher than its previous default of 10 seconds, maybe 30.

Move all boot text from debian-installer package to debian-cd, add .pot files, and actually upload our debian-cd to Ubuntu so that we can use Rosetta for translating this text. gfxboot uses a UTF-8 font on the framebuffer so we can even support non-Latin languages.

CdBootloader (last edited 2008-08-06 16:32:14 by localhost)