Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Jason L Tibbitts III]

> "CL" == Chris Lumens  writes:

CL> Making a new anaconda means making new first and second stage
CL> images, which means making new CD and DVD images, which means a
CL> huge headache for mirrors and for keeping track of all these
CL> versions of images floating around.

The thing is, if you're spinning your own distro then you should be
able to figure out how to rebuild the anaconda RPM out of current CVS.
The last time I had to do it it took only a few additional minutes to
build an anaconda with fixes, along with other packages (kudzu in this
case) that needed updates.

The problems crop up when the current development version becomes
unsuitable for installing a current tree (as happened with the switch
to yum).  At that point it might be nice if the anaconda developers
would consider checking any critical fixes into the release branch for
those of us who regularly respin our distros, but I don't see the
point in actually doing releases.

 - J<

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 3/23/06, Hans Kristian Rosbach  wrote:
> Just thought I'd voice this before the maintainers just let go
> and completely focus on the one for FC6. I bet obvious fixes
> will be detected in the starting phase of developing for FC6
> and those might be backported to FC5 aswell.

Installer bugs happen with pretty much each release. fixed boot.isos
are usually made available as links in bugzilla tickets as issues are
addressed and I believe there is a mechanism which is applied to
incorporate fixes into the mirrors so people doing network installs
can avoid some problems.

But at no point have I ever seen any discussion at any time which
suggests the release team is interested in spinning up replacement
isos and distributing them.  And quite frankly I don't think this is
the most appropriate time to suggest a change in the release model
used. This is the sort of thing that should be debated during the
testing phase, so plans can be in place to support respins if you are
able to convince the people who have to do them that its a good idea.
I don't think your request for fc5 anaconda updates post release day
is going to change any minds as to the support tradeoffs associated
with official respins that incorporate installer changes.

-jef"too little too late"spaleta

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Richard Hughes]

On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 09:30 -0500, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On 3/22/06, Thomas Canniot  wrote:
> > Maybe we could do something here that really helps people, newbies who
> > are just installing their first linux distribution. I dreamt of an
> > anaconda that helps newbies make their first steps in Fedora Core.
> 
> Screw that... embedded game of nexuiz would be much better.
> 
> As for the mock up... perhaps an embedded ogg video of desktop
> interactions with localized closed caption text ala annodex.
> 
> -jef"so what if anaconda would require a minimum of 2 gig of ram for
> the video to play while anaconda does packaging actions."spaleta

What about just slides like powerpoint (images)?

Richard.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Bill Nottingham]

Garry Williams (gtwilli...@gmail.com) said: 
> > One thing that we really probably need to look at for FC6
> > is revisiting the time remaining algorithm.
> 
> Yeah, it took about fifteen minutes after all packages were installed to
> finish doing an update.  That was long "1 minute remaining".  :-)

In prior releases, the upgrade procedure was:

upgrade A
remove old A
upgrade B
remove old C
...
upgrade Z
***
remove old Z

With the switch to yum, it's now:

upgrade A
upgrade B
upgrade C
...
upgrade Z
***
remove old A
remove old B
remove old C
...
remove old Z

The time algorithm and the progress bar were adopted for the first method -
when you get to 'where all the packages are installed', you're at the point
makred by '***' above.

This obviously doesn't fit the new model very well.

Bill

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[dragoran]

Bill Nottingham wrote:

dragoran (drago...@feuerpokemon.de) said: 
 


I don't know if this is a feature or a bug but it seems like a bug:
I tryed a harddisk install (the image was on /dev/md0 ) but I could'nt 
select it it only showed all /dev/sd(a|b)X but not /dev/md0

any reason for that or is this a bug?
   



Well, depending on your point of view, I believe that's either
a bug that's always existed, or a request for a feature enhancement. :)

Bill

 


no it seems that raid0 is broken in anaconda and/or fc5 kernel see:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186312

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 21:29 +0100, Thomas Canniot wrote:
> What I found sad in anaconda during the installation process is the
> permanent showing of our brand new logo for about 20 min, while anaconda
> is copying files. We had in previous version of FC, texts talking about
> the distribution itself. These have disappeared, too bad really.

The main thing needed here is having a group step up to create the
content.  fedora-marketing-love project maybe? :-)

Jeremy

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 15:40 -0800, David Kewley wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 March 2006 09:38, Dimi Paun wrote:
> > From: "Jeremy Katz" 
> > > >   * Disk change indicators
> > >
> > > This comes up from time to time, I'm just not fully convinced of how
> > > useful it is.
> >
> > Coupled with a better time estimate, it would be useful, no doubt.
> > Also copying the contents of the CDs to the HD before hand would be
> > a very good idea too. But when that's not possible (due to free
> > space constraints), the ticks would be nice :)
> 
> A suggestion if this gets considered: dd the CD to a .iso file on disk, and 
> mount it loopback.  That way you avoid slow CD seeks.

The cost is that you then have to read every bit off the CD as opposed
to just the ones for the packages you're installing as well as then
needing to seek more on the disk when installing packages (since you're
reading and writing from the same device).  There's also a non-trivial
disk space overhead 

Jeremy

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Chris Lumens]

> I have to agree that the new installer is very nice.
> But despite this I really wish you will apply some bugfixes
> to anaconda and release it in updates. This of course does
> not help with FC5, but it will help those who use anaconda
> to make new distros or respins such as I plan to do (either
> official or unofficial).
> 
> The complete lack of updates to anaconda in FC4 bugged me,
> but I was too late in the cycle to make you reconsider.
> This time around I hope you will atleast take obvious
> bugfixes and maintain the FC5 anaconda atleast for a
> little while. I'm not asking for new features, only fixes.

We can't really do this easily.  Making a new anaconda means making new
first and second stage images, which means making new CD and DVD images,
which means a huge headache for mirrors and for keeping track of all
these versions of images floating around.

One thing we can look into is the possibility of providing an
updates.img from time to time that rolls up fixes, but this has its own
set of problems.  Doing something like that will make debugging in the
future much harder because we'll have to ask people what updates they
might be using in their installation when they report bugs.  I can just
see all sorts of problems resulting from that.

The installer is special.

- Chris

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Ian Pilcher]

Paul Howarth wrote:
> I upgraded a desktop box from FC4->FC5 yesterday, and my perception was
> that the process was significantly slower (perhaps taking twice as
> long?) as previous upgrades, e.g. FC3->FC4 on the same box. Can't
> explain why that should be, unless of course it was to give me plenty of
> time to read the release notes (which I was able to do in full during
> the process) :-)

I had the same experience.  In a number of cases it took an
uncomfortably long time (15 seconds?) for the installer to respond to
a button click.

-- 

Ian Pilcheri.pilc...@comcast.net

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 3/23/06, Ralf Ertzinger  wrote:
> This step (what does that do, anyway?) is _slow_. 30 seconds per
> schema on my 500MHz iBook. Updating gnome-games takes ages.

I'd have to agree, I've seen the schema updates take quite a bit of
time. So long in fact that I actually flip over and start a top to see
if the rpm trasaction is stalled or not.

-jef

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[David Cantrell]

Hans Kristian Rosbach wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 11:45 -0500, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 10:12 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:
> > > First impression: anaconda really rocks! This is a
> > > very solid, pleasant installer.
> > 
> > Thanks -- always nice to see people not just flaming us :-P
> 
> *snip*
> 
> I have to agree that the new installer is very nice.
> But despite this I really wish you will apply some bugfixes
> to anaconda and release it in updates. This of course does
> not help with FC5, but it will help those who use anaconda
> to make new distros or respins such as I plan to do (either
> official or unofficial).
> 
> The complete lack of updates to anaconda in FC4 bugged me,
> but I was too late in the cycle to make you reconsider.
> This time around I hope you will atleast take obvious
> bugfixes and maintain the FC5 anaconda atleast for a
> little while. I'm not asking for new features, only fixes.

If you're using anaconda in projects, it's probably worth following what
happens in rawhide.  New anaconda packages make it there all the time.

-- 
David Cantrell
Red Hat / Westford, MA

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Hans Kristian Rosbach]

On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 09:32 +0100, Hans Kristian Rosbach wrote:
>> This time around I hope you will atleast take obvious
>> bugfixes and maintain the FC5 anaconda atleast for a
>> little while. I'm not asking for new features, only fixes.
>
>Are you asking this as a general idea or do you have specific bugs that
>you want to see fixed sooner? . Bugzilla links would be nice.

Yes, the general idea. I have no bugreports so far.

Just thought I'd voice this before the maintainers just let go
and completely focus on the one for FC6. I bet obvious fixes
will be detected in the starting phase of developing for FC6
and those might be backported to FC5 aswell.

-HK

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Rahul Sundaram]

On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 09:32 +0100, Hans Kristian Rosbach wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 11:45 -0500, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 10:12 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:
> > > First impression: anaconda really rocks! This is a
> > > very solid, pleasant installer.
> > 
> > Thanks -- always nice to see people not just flaming us :-P
> 
> *snip*
> 
> I have to agree that the new installer is very nice.
> But despite this I really wish you will apply some bugfixes
> to anaconda and release it in updates. This of course does
> not help with FC5, but it will help those who use anaconda
> to make new distros or respins such as I plan to do (either
> official or unofficial).
> 
> The complete lack of updates to anaconda in FC4 bugged me,
> but I was too late in the cycle to make you reconsider.
> This time around I hope you will atleast take obvious
> bugfixes and maintain the FC5 anaconda atleast for a
> little while. I'm not asking for new features, only fixes.
> 
> -HK

Are you asking this as a general idea or do you have specific bugs that
you want to see fixed sooner? . Bugzilla links would be nice.

Rahul

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Dimi Paun]

From: "Bill Crawford" 
>  That said, a blinking text for failure *would* make it stand out; in
> particular the whole red/green thing only works well when it's one of
those
> standing out in contrast to the other. In cases where there's only a small
> amount of coloured text, it's not all that helpful anyway.

Tha's why I suggested that the background be green/red, since
it provides a lot more color. Having other elements (like blinking)
to differentiate the two would also be good, but I think they should
be in addition, rather than replacing, the color background.

-- 
Dimi Paun 
Lattica, Inc.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 3/22/06, Thomas Canniot  wrote:
> Maybe we could do something here that really helps people, newbies who
> are just installing their first linux distribution. I dreamt of an
> anaconda that helps newbies make their first steps in Fedora Core.

Screw that... embedded game of nexuiz would be much better.

As for the mock up... perhaps an embedded ogg video of desktop
interactions with localized closed caption text ala annodex.

-jef"so what if anaconda would require a minimum of 2 gig of ram for
the video to play while anaconda does packaging actions."spaleta

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Garry Williams]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 11:45 -0500, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 10:12 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:

[snip]

> One thing that we really probably need to look at for FC6
> is revisiting the time remaining algorithm.

Yeah, it took about fifteen minutes after all packages were installed to
finish doing an update.  That was long "1 minute remaining".  :-)

-- 
Garry Williams -- +1 (678) 656-4579

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Paul Howarth]

Igor Jagec wrote:

Paul Howarth wrote:

I upgraded a desktop box from FC4->FC5 yesterday, and my perception was 




Can you mount CD or DVD medias? I've upgrade FC4 via install media.
Everything works fine on FC5 clean install, but not on upgrade from FC4.


Didn't try; I always do NFS installs as they're so much faster than DVD/CD.

Paul.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Ralf Ertzinger]

Hi.

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 12:36:33 -0500, Ray Strode wrote:

> I think installing gconf schemas got slower with the gconf backend
> changes.  This may have something to do with things, not sure.
> 
> If that is a significant cause of the slowdowns, we can partially
> alleviate the problem, by changing all %post snippets from
> 
> for S in ""; do
>   gconftool-2 --make-install-rule $S
> done
> 
> to
> 
> gconftool-2 --make-install-rule 

This step (what does that do, anyway?) is _slow_. 30 seconds per
schema on my 500MHz iBook. Updating gnome-games takes ages.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Hans Kristian Rosbach]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 11:45 -0500, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 10:12 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:
> > First impression: anaconda really rocks! This is a
> > very solid, pleasant installer.
> 
> Thanks -- always nice to see people not just flaming us :-P

*snip*

I have to agree that the new installer is very nice.
But despite this I really wish you will apply some bugfixes
to anaconda and release it in updates. This of course does
not help with FC5, but it will help those who use anaconda
to make new distros or respins such as I plan to do (either
official or unofficial).

The complete lack of updates to anaconda in FC4 bugged me,
but I was too late in the cycle to make you reconsider.
This time around I hope you will atleast take obvious
bugfixes and maintain the FC5 anaconda atleast for a
little while. I'm not asking for new features, only fixes.

-HK

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Igor Jagec]

Paul Howarth wrote:

> I upgraded a desktop box from FC4->FC5 yesterday, and my perception was 



Can you mount CD or DVD medias? I've upgrade FC4 via install media.
Everything works fine on FC5 clean install, but not on upgrade from FC4.

-- 
Igor Jagec

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[David Kewley]

On Wednesday 22 March 2006 09:38, Dimi Paun wrote:
> From: "Jeremy Katz" 
> > >   * Disk change indicators
> >
> > This comes up from time to time, I'm just not fully convinced of how
> > useful it is.
>
> Coupled with a better time estimate, it would be useful, no doubt.
> Also copying the contents of the CDs to the HD before hand would be
> a very good idea too. But when that's not possible (due to free
> space constraints), the ticks would be nice :)

A suggestion if this gets considered: dd the CD to a .iso file on disk, and 
mount it loopback.  That way you avoid slow CD seeks.

David

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, dragoran  said:
> I don't know if this is a feature or a bug but it seems like a bug:
> I tryed a harddisk install (the image was on /dev/md0 ) but I could'nt 
> select it it only showed all /dev/sd(a|b)X but not /dev/md0
> any reason for that or is this a bug?

Currently, hard disk installs are only supported from native ext2, ext3,
or VFAT partitions; no software RAID and no LVM.
-- 
Chris Adams 
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Bill Nottingham]

dragoran (drago...@feuerpokemon.de) said: 
> I don't know if this is a feature or a bug but it seems like a bug:
> I tryed a harddisk install (the image was on /dev/md0 ) but I could'nt 
> select it it only showed all /dev/sd(a|b)X but not /dev/md0
> any reason for that or is this a bug?

Well, depending on your point of view, I believe that's either
a bug that's always existed, or a request for a feature enhancement. :)

Bill

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Bill Crawford  said:
>  Not entirely true. Most "colourblind" people have partial but slightly weak 
> receptivity to certain wavelengths (the most common forms being that they are 
> less sensitive to either red or green).  In the majority of cases a solid 
> colour is distinguishable, I have no trouble telling red from green on the 
> linux console; there are shades of pale green and bright oranges that are 
> hard to distinguish.

A cow-orker in the next cube is red/green colorblind and most often
cannot tell between the two (even with solid colors).  With some things,
if both are side by side, he can tell, but if you just present one or
the other, he usually cannot.

>  I would suggest using both: red, blinking text for failure. Or yellow, which 
> stands out better for people with or without poor colour vision in most cases
> (hence the choice of sodium lamps for street lighting in the UK).

There's also blue/yellow colorblind (more rare). :-)

-- 
Chris Adams 
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Bill Crawford]

On Wednesday 22 March 2006 19:32, Chris Adams wrote:

> Don't use a green/red background as the difference; color blind people
> can't tell the difference.

 Not entirely true. Most "colourblind" people have partial but slightly weak 
receptivity to certain wavelengths (the most common forms being that they are 
less sensitive to either red or green).  In the majority of cases a solid 
colour is distinguishable, I have no trouble telling red from green on the 
linux console; there are shades of pale green and bright oranges that are 
hard to distinguish.

 That said, a blinking text for failure *would* make it stand out; in 
particular the whole red/green thing only works well when it's one of those 
standing out in contrast to the other. In cases where there's only a small 
amount of coloured text, it's not all that helpful anyway.

 I would suggest using both: red, blinking text for failure. Or yellow, which 
stands out better for people with or without poor colour vision in most cases
(hence the choice of sodium lamps for street lighting in the UK).

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Thomas Canniot]

As Dimi Paun just shared his thoughts about anaconda, here is what i'm
dreaming of for anaconda.

What I found sad in anaconda during the installation process is the
permanent showing of our brand new logo for about 20 min, while anaconda
is copying files. We had in previous version of FC, texts talking about
the distribution itself. These have disappeared, too bad really.

Maybe we could do something here that really helps people, newbies who
are just installing their first linux distribution. I dreamt of an
anaconda that helps newbies make their first steps in Fedora Core.

Here is a mockup i made showing anaconda copying files and delivering
some help at the same time!

http://mrtomlinux.org/Up2date&anaconda-en.png

Of course, many topics could be reached this way, and that would make
Fedorz Core an even more user-friendly distribution.

Of course, many geeks won't like the idea because it is not a brand new
feature, or because they may feel bored reading through this kind of
newbies' help.

Tell me what you think about it!

Regards,

Thomas Canniot

Le mercredi 22 mars 2006 à 10:12 -0500, Dimi Paun a écrit :
> Hi Jeremy,
> 
> Just wanted to share a few thoughts about anaconda,
> while fresh in my mind (I've managed to install FC5
> last night).
> 
> First impression: anaconda really rocks! This is a
> very solid, pleasant installer.
> 
> I do have a few _minor_ points that I think would
> make it a bit nicer to use:
>   * PASS/FAIL color coding
> When testing disks, there's nothing in the way
> of visual feedback between the PASS/FAIL screens
> (I haven't actually seen the FAIL screen :), but
> I assume it hasn't changed since FC4)
> This is a screen that I tend to dismiss quickly,
> and I'm left with that nagging feeling that I didn't
> read the text right. A green/red background just for
> the word PASS/FAIL will help immensely.
> 
>   * The text based boot is ugly
> Rather minor point, but a graphical initial boot 
> would make for a less intimidating experience in
> this otherwise flawless graphical installer.
> 
>   * Disk change indicators
> Not sure it's worth the trouble, but it would be
> really nice if we got some ticks along the progress
> bar on when we can expect we will need to change
> the CDs. This would also tell someone which CDs are
> needed. It would help people a lot to manage their
> time during installs.
> 
>   * Links don't work in Release Notes
> Rather frustrating, considering the size of the doc.
> Links within the document should work, if they
> look like regular links (color, cursor)
> 
>   * External links in Release Notes are confusing
> These can't possibly work, it would be nice if we
> can disable them to avoid confusion.
> 
>   * Space does not page down in Release Notes
> I am so used to use space to page down in viewers,
> I really miss it when I can not do so.
> 
>   * Release Notes too big?
> I found them to be too big/verbose, especially for
> a light read during install. But maybe it's just me.
> 
> Hope this helps, and thank you again for the excellent installer.
> 
> -- 
> Dimi Paun 
> Lattica, Inc.
> 

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Richard Hally]

Jeremy Katz wrote:

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 10:12 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:

First impression: anaconda really rocks! This is a
very solid, pleasant installer.


Thanks -- always nice to see people not just flaming us :-P



Very nice!!




  * Disk change indicators
Not sure it's worth the trouble, but it would be
really nice if we got some ticks along the progress
bar on when we can expect we will need to change
the CDs. This would also tell someone which CDs are
needed. It would help people a lot to manage their
time during installs.


This comes up from time to time, I'm just not fully convinced of how
useful it is.  One thing that we really probably need to look at for FC6
is revisiting the time remaining algorithm.  It seems that every few
releases we need to go in and really prod at it to make it more
accurate.  One of the not measurable things which has a pretty big
impact ends up being the various cache generators run as %post
scriptlets of packages.


Just an idea, instead of/in addition would it be possible to show the 
number of packages and update that? e.g. [19/725] or what ever RPM has 
available.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Jeremy Katz  said:
> On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 10:12 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:
> > A green/red background just for
> > the word PASS/FAIL will help immensely.
> 
> I think there's actually a bug about this.  Doing it in newt isn't as
> easy as one would hope, though :-/  I do agree that making the
> difference between pass and fail more obvious is probably a good idea.

Don't use a green/red background as the difference; color blind people
can't tell the difference.

In text mode, extra line drawing characters (e.g. "---> FAIL <---") or
blinking text (does the Linux console support that attribute?) would be
preferable.

Another option would be to make the default selection box on the FAIL
screen do nothing, so just hitting ENTER won't continue (you'd have to
TAB to the "Continue" box).

-- 
Chris Adams 
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Rahul Sundaram]

Dimi Paun wrote:



 * Release Notes too big?
   I found them to be too big/verbose, especially for
   a light read during install. But maybe it's just me.

 

Pretty much all of the information supplied in the release notes are 
just things that users have asked for in the previous releases. We have 
tried adding references where required to help avoid too much verbosity 
but it's unlikely that we will be able to drop off the information 
without alienating a portion of the end users.  I am looking at 
providing a better simple overview by default with links to more 
detailed technical notes.



--
Rahul 

Anaconda: good work!

[Dimi Paun]

From: "Jeremy Katz" 
> 
> Thanks -- always nice to see people not just flaming us :-P
> 

Hey, don't get fooled by the flames, there's a lot of love here.
We just get passionate about our views, that all :)

> >   * Disk change indicators
> 
> This comes up from time to time, I'm just not fully convinced of how
> useful it is.  

Coupled with a better time estimate, it would be useful, no doubt.
Also copying the contents of the CDs to the HD before hand would be
a very good idea too. But when that's not possible (due to free
space constraints), the ticks would be nice :)

> One thing that we really probably need to look at for FC6
> is revisiting the time remaining algorithm.

Ideed -- I think the algorihm takes into account stuff that
it should't: at end of disk 3 (I think) it said 15min left,
after putting in disk 4, it jumped to 75min (no good).

> >   * External links in Release Notes are confusing
> 
> Hrm.  Not sure how to handle this.  They could conceivably work in
> network installs, but are almost certainly a bad idea.  Maybe the way to
> do this is to do some processing on the release notes file before we
> feed it to the viewer

Disabling the external links would be a good idea. And that can
happen even before you put them on CD (use a special Release Notes
file just for showing during install).
 
> >   * Space does not page down in Release Notes
> 
> This seems like it should be easy enough to implement

Cool!
 
> >   * Release Notes too big?
> > I found them to be too big/verbose, especially for
> > a light read during install. But maybe it's just me.
> 
> Yep, the Docs project has rocked at getting lots of content.  This has
> the downside of there being lots of content.  Double-edged sword...

It seems like a classical case of "I didn't have time to write you a
small letter, so I wrote you a long one instead". :)

-- 
Dimi Paun 
Lattica, Inc.

Anaconda: good work!

[Ray Strode]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 11:46 -0500, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 15:51 +, Paul Howarth wrote:
> > I upgraded a desktop box from FC4->FC5 yesterday, and my perception was 
> > that the process was significantly slower (perhaps taking twice as 
> > long?) as previous upgrades, e.g. FC3->FC4 on the same box. Can't 
> > explain why that should be, unless of course it was to give me plenty of 
> > time to read the release notes (which I was able to do in full during 
> > the process) :-)
> 
> Yeah, we're aware that upgrades are slower.  This is partially due to
> there being more scriplets doing more.  But I'm pretty sure there's
> something else going on differently as well, just haven't had a chance
> to track it down
I think installing gconf schemas got slower with the gconf backend
changes.  This may have something to do with things, not sure.

If that is a significant cause of the slowdowns, we can partially
alleviate the problem, by changing all %post snippets from

for S in ""; do
  gconftool-2 --make-install-rule $S
done

to

gconftool-2 --make-install-rule 



--Ray

Anaconda: good work!

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 15:51 +, Paul Howarth wrote:
> I upgraded a desktop box from FC4->FC5 yesterday, and my perception was 
> that the process was significantly slower (perhaps taking twice as 
> long?) as previous upgrades, e.g. FC3->FC4 on the same box. Can't 
> explain why that should be, unless of course it was to give me plenty of 
> time to read the release notes (which I was able to do in full during 
> the process) :-)

Yeah, we're aware that upgrades are slower.  This is partially due to
there being more scriplets doing more.  But I'm pretty sure there's
something else going on differently as well, just haven't had a chance
to track it down

Jeremy

Anaconda: good work!

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 10:12 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:
> First impression: anaconda really rocks! This is a
> very solid, pleasant installer.

Thanks -- always nice to see people not just flaming us :-P

> I do have a few _minor_ points that I think would
> make it a bit nicer to use:
>   * PASS/FAIL color coding
> When testing disks, there's nothing in the way
> of visual feedback between the PASS/FAIL screens
> (I haven't actually seen the FAIL screen :), but
> I assume it hasn't changed since FC4)
> This is a screen that I tend to dismiss quickly,
> and I'm left with that nagging feeling that I didn't
> read the text right. A green/red background just for
> the word PASS/FAIL will help immensely.

I think there's actually a bug about this.  Doing it in newt isn't as
easy as one would hope, though :-/  I do agree that making the
difference between pass and fail more obvious is probably a good idea.

>   * The text based boot is ugly
> Rather minor point, but a graphical initial boot 
> would make for a less intimidating experience in
> this otherwise flawless graphical installer.

As others have said, the problem is that we're relatively space
constrained here.  rhgb ends up requiring X at which point we're using
way more space than we currently do.  Any other solution ends up
basically being the realm of kernel patches that aren't upstream

>   * Disk change indicators
> Not sure it's worth the trouble, but it would be
> really nice if we got some ticks along the progress
> bar on when we can expect we will need to change
> the CDs. This would also tell someone which CDs are
> needed. It would help people a lot to manage their
> time during installs.

This comes up from time to time, I'm just not fully convinced of how
useful it is.  One thing that we really probably need to look at for FC6
is revisiting the time remaining algorithm.  It seems that every few
releases we need to go in and really prod at it to make it more
accurate.  One of the not measurable things which has a pretty big
impact ends up being the various cache generators run as %post
scriptlets of packages.

>   * Links don't work in Release Notes
> Rather frustrating, considering the size of the doc.
> Links within the document should work, if they
> look like regular links (color, cursor)

Yeah.  We didn't have HTML release notes until late in the game.  At
that point, I noticed but it was a bit risky to be going and making the
necessary changes to have them work.

>   * External links in Release Notes are confusing
> These can't possibly work, it would be nice if we
> can disable them to avoid confusion.

Hrm.  Not sure how to handle this.  They could conceivably work in
network installs, but are almost certainly a bad idea.  Maybe the way to
do this is to do some processing on the release notes file before we
feed it to the viewer

>   * Space does not page down in Release Notes
> I am so used to use space to page down in viewers,
> I really miss it when I can not do so.

This seems like it should be easy enough to implement

>   * Release Notes too big?
> I found them to be too big/verbose, especially for
> a light read during install. But maybe it's just me.

Yep, the Docs project has rocked at getting lots of content.  This has
the downside of there being lots of content.  Double-edged sword...

Jeremy

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Jesse Keating]

On Wednesday 22 March 2006 07:51, Paul Howarth wrote:
> I upgraded a desktop box from FC4->FC5 yesterday, and my perception was
> that the process was significantly slower (perhaps taking twice as
> long?) as previous upgrades, e.g. FC3->FC4 on the same box. Can't
> explain why that should be, unless of course it was to give me plenty of
> time to read the release notes (which I was able to do in full during
> the process)

The use of yum in the installer makes it take a bit longer.  But it is far 
better than previous tools used.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE  (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team  (www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key  (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)


pgpR6GbulxaNL.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Dimi Paun]

From: "Matthew Miller" 
> >   * The text based boot is ugly
> That part has to remain small and failsafe

I realize why it's done this way, my comment
was from a user's perspective. We do have the
graphical splash at bootloader time, would it
be so risky to have it at boot time as well?

> >   * External links in Release Notes are confusing
> > These can't possibly work, it would be nice if we
> > can disable them to avoid confusion.
> 
> Why can't they possibly work?

Sorry, I did not realize anaconda does DHCP and such.
Even so, when upgrading does it configure the interfaces
according to the settings in the upgraded system?

Regardless, they didn't work for me :)

-- 
Dimi Paun 
Lattica, Inc.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Paul Howarth]

Dimi Paun wrote:
   * Release Notes too big?

I found them to be too big/verbose, especially for
a light read during install. But maybe it's just me.


I upgraded a desktop box from FC4->FC5 yesterday, and my perception was 
that the process was significantly slower (perhaps taking twice as 
long?) as previous upgrades, e.g. FC3->FC4 on the same box. Can't 
explain why that should be, unless of course it was to give me plenty of 
time to read the release notes (which I was able to do in full during 
the process) :-)


Paul.

Re: Anaconda: good work!

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 10:12:09AM -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:
>   * The text based boot is ugly
> Rather minor point, but a graphical initial boot 
> would make for a less intimidating experience in
> this otherwise flawless graphical installer.

That part has to remain small and failsafe


>   * External links in Release Notes are confusing
> These can't possibly work, it would be nice if we
> can disable them to avoid confusion.

Why can't they possibly work?


-- 
Matthew Miller   mat...@mattdm.org  
Boston University Linux  -->  

Anaconda: good work!

[Dimi Paun]

Hi Jeremy,

Just wanted to share a few thoughts about anaconda,
while fresh in my mind (I've managed to install FC5
last night).

First impression: anaconda really rocks! This is a
very solid, pleasant installer.

I do have a few _minor_ points that I think would
make it a bit nicer to use:
  * PASS/FAIL color coding
When testing disks, there's nothing in the way
of visual feedback between the PASS/FAIL screens
(I haven't actually seen the FAIL screen :), but
I assume it hasn't changed since FC4)
This is a screen that I tend to dismiss quickly,
and I'm left with that nagging feeling that I didn't
read the text right. A green/red background just for
the word PASS/FAIL will help immensely.

  * The text based boot is ugly
Rather minor point, but a graphical initial boot 
would make for a less intimidating experience in
this otherwise flawless graphical installer.

  * Disk change indicators
Not sure it's worth the trouble, but it would be
really nice if we got some ticks along the progress
bar on when we can expect we will need to change
the CDs. This would also tell someone which CDs are
needed. It would help people a lot to manage their
time during installs.

  * Links don't work in Release Notes
Rather frustrating, considering the size of the doc.
Links within the document should work, if they
look like regular links (color, cursor)

  * External links in Release Notes are confusing
These can't possibly work, it would be nice if we
can disable them to avoid confusion.

  * Space does not page down in Release Notes
I am so used to use space to page down in viewers,
I really miss it when I can not do so.

  * Release Notes too big?
I found them to be too big/verbose, especially for
a light read during install. But maybe it's just me.

Hope this helps, and thank you again for the excellent installer.

-- 
Dimi Paun 
Lattica, Inc.