Hello everyone,
One of the long-term plan for ReactOS was to have a graphical user-mode interface for the 1st-stage setup, similar to e.g. what may be found in newer versions of Windows (Vista+), as an alternative to our current 1st-stage setup in text-mode (note that I say alternative, not replacement, because both of them can live together without fundamental changes to either ReactOS or our ISO images, both of them can share core functionality, and finally because some people may prefer the text-mode either for unattended installations or for low-memory conditions). You can find some information about the 1st-stage GUI setup here: https://reactos.org/wiki/First_Stage_GUI_Setup . In our source code, it can be found in base/setup/reactos/ . Currently only most of the screens have been implemented, while the core functionality is not present. However this functionality can somehow be taken by reusing the source code of USETUP (see my branch https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos/branches/setup_improvements/base/setup/ ). Abstract (aka. TL;DR): I explain below the needed changes introduced experimentally in the setup-improvements branch, revision 75273, to generate an all-in-one ReactOS bootcd, that includes both the 1st-stage text-mode setup + 1st-stage GUI setup alternative + live-demo functionality. This is meant to replace our currently separated bootcd / livecd ISOs, where the latter currently do not offer the possibility to install ReactOS. Some currently known potential problems are evoked. Images: Proposed BootCD contents : http://i.imgur.com/EBA6JHd.png ; Proposed Boot Menu : http://i.imgur.com/14n5Ryi.png . Having a 1st-stage GUI setup also means that itll also use the already-existing functionality that we offer in our Live-CD ISOs. Currently, the Live-CD ISOs we provide only allow for demonstration purposes, while the ReactOS installation proper is found in our so-called Boot-CD ISOs (which currently only contain text-mode setup). Thus, the 1st-stage GUI setup, as an alternative to the 1st-stage setup in text-mode, means that both ISOs can be merged all in one, and we wont have to make a distinction between both: they will be able to offer both the 1st-stage in text mode AND a graphical mode (à la Live-CD) where it is possible to choose whether to test ReactOS in demo mode, or to install it via the GUI setup. Such an all-in-one ISO capability was already present in the trunk under the name hybridcd, but was used only when we built ISO images for the public events where ReactOS participated (FOSDEM, CLT, ). But now, having the setup process both in text mode and in graphics mode, in addition to the Live-CD demonstration capability, really suggests just using the all-in-one ISO and stop doing the Boot-CD (aka. only setup) vs. Live-CD (aka. only demo) separation. We would just generate only one type of ISO that contains everything. With that in mind, I have committed in my branch setup_improvements, in revision 75273 : https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos?view=revision <https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos?view=revision&revision=75273> &revision=75273 such changes to be able to only build an ISO that contains everything. These changes are minimal, in the sense that I havent purposelessly changed the names of the build targets just to be fancy. Such changes may be done later, but not now. The needed changes are the following: First, the build target that will generate the all-in-one CD is called bootcd, because this also was the main build target for ISOs before the change. Second, I completely remove the hybridcd build target, because its functionality are now absorbed by bootcd. Third, the build target livecd is reduced to its strict minimum. For the sake of building a RAMDISK boot drive (see comments after), I continue to generate an ISO for livecd. But Ive changed the generated name to liveimage.iso, to emphasize the point that it has to be understood as a (virtual) disk image for RAMDISK purposes, not just as a ISO image. Note that I havent renamed the build target livecd to, say, liveimage to reduce my commit changes (such a renaming may be done later). The livecd target builds a list of files that need to be present in the image. The generated liveimage.iso is no-more a bootable ISO, Ive removed inclusion of freeloader + El-Torito boot-sector + the USB-ISO-Hybrid functionality for it. The bootcd target has been slightly changed in order to include the liveimage.iso as a file (for RAMDISK), and to also add the contents of this image in a flattened tree within the bootcd iso: the two directories Profiles and reactos. The 1st-stage text-mode setup is kept, as said before, but its corresponding files + the installation CAB source + the 1st-stage GUI setup application proper goes into a (renamed) directory called i386, corresponding to installation files for an i386 installation (technically, 1 per architecture when well have a ReactOS ported to other archs). These files cannot be present in the same reactos directory as the ones from the flattened LiveImage, because some of the files are different (smss.exe, registry, etc ) Our FreeLdr knows from where to boot the 1st-stage text-mode (from i386), as well as the Live-demo in graphics mode (from reactos). I need to adjust the code of few setup components for them to stop relying on hardcoded reactos/ path, and instead use a more dynamic (determined at runtime) path. NOTE FOR DEVS/SYSADMINS: The bootcdregtest build target, generating the special ISO that is fed to our test bots, remains exactly the same, and the files contained in the generated ISO have not changed. NOTE about the RAMDISK feature: I enabled it so that a user can remove the demo media (CD, ) and reuse the drive for other purposes, while still being able to use ReactOS. Of course this requires a large amount of RAM available. And thats also why I include the flattened liveimage files so that one can use the demo without the RAMDISK (when few memory is available). As is currently implemented, this makes the ReactOS all-in-one bootcd large (it gains a good 100 MB) due to duplicated space (the flattened files, plus the same inside liveimage.iso). I cannot do better (unless ditching either the RAMDISK, or keeping it but not include the flattened files) because ReactOS currently doesnt have a way to boot from disk images *that are not meant to be a RAMDISK*. The day when this difficulty is removed, a single disk image could be used either as the RAMDISK or the (non-removable) installation. A second remark is that I dont plan to have the 1st-stage GUI setup available when booting ReactOS in RAMDISK mode because, as a consequence of its current implementation, I would otherwise need to duplicate the installation CAB source in the RAMDISK image too, making it again larger. NOTE about the FreeLdr Boot Menu: Since ReactOS is not that stable currently, we like to boot it in debug mode, and redirect the output to a serial port (usually COM1). However some people dont have serial ports on real hardware, so we propose to boot with debug output redirected to screen. However this may slow ReactOS down, so we also like to boot ReactOS with debug mode disabled. Thats why I proposed the declination of these boot modes for each ReactOS installation contained in the BootCD (Live+Setup, with or without RAMDISK, and with debug enabled or not). The problem is that it clutters a lot the boot menu. A remedy would be to implement in FreeLdr the functionality of editing *existing* boot entries to change their associated boot options, so that one could add by hand the options to enable (or disable) debugging. This is currently unimplemented. The only implemented feature is to set up a new boot entry on the fly to boot ReactOS afterwards. NOTE for regress-testers: Possible remark that I may hear: I only care about installing ReactOS (perhaps just in unattended mode) and I dont care at all about the GUI setup nor about the Live-demo thingie, and your new BootCD is too large. I want to be able to download & use the good-old bootcd for regress-testing. . So what to do? Since we currently build and store the bootcdregtest ISOs, but are not publicly available through our www.reactos.org/getbuilds interface, I would suggest here to make them available to people, so that those who want to quickly DL and/or install/regress-test ReactOS could use these ISOs instead (which are really just the good old BootCDs, but with unattended installation enabled *and* with our test-suite included). They are not that much large, just a bit more than the old regular bootcd. Please let me know whether you have other remarks/comments/questions/suggestions/etc to make the new BootCDs better. Best, Hermès
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