Thoughts on Ubuntu Sounder 7 installer CD installation usability

[Colin Watson]

On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 11:40:14AM +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Colin Watson wrote:
> >OK, neither of these questions are asked in our default install path.
> >The only way they could be asked is if you experienced some errors
> >earlier on in the installation which dropped your debconf priority down
> >to low, or if you used the back button lots (that also drops the debconf
> >priority).
> 
> It would be useful if there was a high-level log of "what happened" 
> during an install. Is there such a thing? For example:
> 
>  - failed to detect XYZ
>  - installation priority dropped to  D
>    ...

Yes, this is all in /var/log/syslog during d-i, saved in
/var/log/debian-installer/ after the first reboot. It's not really
high-level, but there are so many events you might be interested in ...

For example, debconf priority changes look like this (I manufactured
this failure for the purpose):

  Sep  1 11:05:48 (none) user.warn main-menu[505]: WARNING **: Configuring 'netcfg' failed with error code 1 
  Sep  1 11:05:48 (none) user.warn main-menu[505]: WARNING **: Menu item 'netcfg' failed. 
  Sep  1 11:05:59 (none) user.info main-menu[505]: INFO: Modifying debconf priority limit from 'critical' to 'medium'
  Sep  1 11:05:59 (none) user.debug debconf: Setting debconf/priority to medium

> Also, given that we are asking a limited subset of questions, and 
> setting sane defaults elsewhere, are there ways we could harden the 
> installer against failed autodetections? For example, leaving config 
> files in a sane default state, failing gracefully where possible, and 
> logging such failures?

The installer has a lot of error-tolerance code in it, and I already
consider it a bug when it doesn't. However, it'll have to be reported
and fixed on a case-by-case basis, I think; most of the generalizable
work has been done.

> Also, potentially alerting the user when we do drop the priority
> level, because it seems to happen only when things go wrong, and it
> seems to result in weird D-I codepaths being exposed.

We should see a lot less of this after my main-menu changes yesterday
(not in this morning's CD images, but they're in the CD image rebuild I
just kicked off). Backing up will now only temporarily drop priority.
The only things which will permanently drop priority are failures, which
will be signalled with a red error screen, and the "Change debconf
priority" item on the main menu.

I do want to hear from Sounders about any failure screens they see.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                    [cjwatson at canonical.com]