I'm pretty exited about this as it's something that's on my mind for probably two years now and IMO has the potential to make D-I a lot more user friendly.
The basic idea is to add three new menu items, the first two only displayed at medium priority and only these are executed by default: - initial settings (after locale/kbd-chooser; included in initrds) - additional settings (after anna; loaded by anna) - generic change settings (after finish-install; included in initrds) These settings include all kinds of things that are currently hard to access. Instead of having to pass boot options, users can now just access a "settings" menu option. Passing boot options remains possible though. The initial settings dialog would include an option "Show low priority questions". This means that we could finally change expert mode to medium prio while still leaving users an early, easy option to change to low prio. IMO this fits well with the new syslinux boot menu for x86 which makes passing boot options a lot less obvious. I've implemented three "settings" as a rough demo: - mouse settings - enabling support for SATA RAID and multipath The first activates a separate dialog that allows to change all three mouse settings we have (and has a dirty hack to activate the new settings: it kills D-I so it gets restarted). The last two are currently just a true/false toggle (they should get a proper yes/no dialog with some explanation of what they do). Note that these are not shown in the "initial" dialog. Here are some screenshots: - http://people.debian.org/~fjp/tmp/d-i/d-i_settings.png Shows all three current options (third menu entry). - http://people.debian.org/~fjp/tmp/d-i/d-i_settings_mouse.png - http://people.debian.org/~fjp/tmp/d-i/d-i_settings_menu.png Shows the first two new menu items. And here is an image to try for yourself (gtk frontend): - http://people.debian.org/~fjp/tmp/d-i/mini_settings.iso With a default install you'll see nothing. Either backup to the menu or boot in expert mode. To get an idea of how it works, see: - /usr/bin/installer-settings - /usr/lib/settings/*/* Together they IMO show the basic flexibility. It uses a plug-in structure: the SATA RAID/multipath settings come from disk-detect; mouse settings comes from rootskel-gtk. Here are some features I have in mind (some partially implemented, but not in the demo): - remove the "initial" and "additional" options from the menu after they have been passed (users can still use the generic menu option) - show some settings only in selected dialogs; example: the "show low prio questions" option would only be shown in "initial settings", while the current debconf-priority could be integrated in "generic change" - disable showing some settings after some point in the installation - show some settings only once (either in "early" or in "additional") The settings dialog is currently flat, but I plan a two-level structure with headers for main categories and the items indented, and possibly a blank line between categories. Below an overview of candidates for "settings" support. Some will need discussion. Cheers, FJP P.S. Yes, it uses the new align feature in cdebconf :-) Overview of potential settings ------------------------------ * General - show expert questions (in "early") - debconf priority (in "menu") - rescue mode (in "early/additional") - frontend theme - mouse support (device/protocol/left-handed) (in "early/menu") * Hardware support - SATA RAID - multipath - PCMCIA support (could help avoid asking multiple times!) * Networking - PPPoE support (in "early") - type of configuration (none/static/dhcp) - allow unauthenticated (?) * Installed system - use SUDO instead of root account - create first user * Debian settings (or Package management) - use security (?) - use volatile (?) - use contrib (?) - use non-free (?) * Advanced - keep regular virtual consoles (sercon installs) - eject CD - halt/poweroff system instead of reboot Other options * selection of bootloader to use?
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