On 19/10/2007, Anil Gulecha <anil.verve at gmail.com> wrote: > On 10/19/07, Glenn Lagasse <glenn.lagasse at sun.com> wrote: > > Hey Sanjay, > > > > * Sanjay Nadkarni (Sanjay.Nadkarni at sun.com) wrote: > > > > > > One of the things I am trying to figure out the number of options a user > > > should have to boot OpenSolaris. This of course directly translates to > > > the number of grub entries. Currently, the entry will boot the > > > system in the best available mode, i.e if your hardware supports ISA64 > > > then opensolaris will boot into a 64 bit mode. However, should should > > > there be an explicit entry for booting into 32 bit mode ? (For October > > > prototype there is no safe mode boot. ) Should there be a no-acpi based > > > boot ? > > > > > > Your thoughts are welcome. > > > > I think we probably want to keep things simple. Too many choices are > > likely to confuse. But a few choices might not be a bad idea. I don't > > know that we need an explicit 32 bit entry. Have we ever seen an issue > > where the auto-detection failed? A non-acpi entry might be a good idea > > given the horrible state of acpi support on most consumer grade hardware > > we've seen. > > > Hi, > > Regarding the many options view, we can keep them all and still hide > them from the user. I know that fedora core uses a grub feature that > does not display the list but allows for a default selection. I found > a screenshot here > (http://www.homelandstupidity.us/images/FC3/FC3-037.png). I haven't > tried the later versions of fedora, so dont know if they do it > similarly too, and if the grub stuff went upstream. > > We could default to the normal startup in indiana this way in say 3 > seconds. All the other options could be viewed by canceling the > default start and viewing the other options (acpi/ 32 bit/ ..)
I was just going to ask about that. I think that only showing the default boot options for each OS present and only showing advanced or troubleshooting options if the user somehow triggers the option to show them is far preferable. It is certainly less confusing to the average user. I do think that it needs to be explicitly triggered by the user. Cancelling the default boot option shouldn't cause the advanced ones to show automatically since it would be pretty common to switch between booting say, Windows and OpenSolaris. -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst binarycrusader at gmail.com - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. " --Donald Knuth
