Package: debian-installer
Severity: normal
Tags: patch
Please do set a timeout in syslinux screen. Even if it's a very high one.
Since sparc already has 600/10 s as timeout, I propose the same for x86.
Rationale:
Some computers have BIOSes that don't support USB keyboards. These are
not necessarily old computers; I've found relatively new ones (with amd64
cpu, etc) that also exhibit this fuckage. The problem is terrible for any
OS whose installer relies on BIOS calls to receive keyboard input at some
point. A friend of mine stopped using Windows because he was unable to
install it :-). Then again, we had an Ubuntu CD and we were unable to
type anything in the boot screen (which AFAIK is syslinux-based and relies
on BIOS). Fortunately thanks to the timeout the system booted and he
could install something Debian-ish at least. However, Debian install
wouldn't work unless a special CD were built with timeout enabled.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-3-amd64
Locale: LANG=ca_AD.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ca_AD.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Index: boot/x86/syslinux.cfg
===================================================================
--- boot/x86/syslinux.cfg (revision 45270)
+++ boot/x86/syslinux.cfg (working copy)
@@ -34,4 +34,4 @@
append auto=true priority=critical ${VIDEO_MODE} initrd=${INITRD} --
${CONSOLE}
PROMPT 1
-TIMEOUT 0
+TIMEOUT 600
