rhgb

[Paul Morgan]

On Mon, 2003-10-27 at 16:30, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> Perhaps a good middle ground is "I want to know if there were *any
> failures at all* during the boot." To me, this is easily resolved by
> having a small "red exclamation point" icon turned on (in keeping with
> other thematic notices), or possibly changing the color of the spinner
> to red. This would clue you in that you need to look at the boot log to
> see the source of the failure.
> 
> > For example, lets say that the "normal" time server I point ntp at is down 
> > when I boot-up, I would like to be alerted to that fact.  

Great example. A non-tech user should not need to understand what ntpd
is or why it fails when he's out in the field (and therefore
disconnected from a network, regardless of how many ntp servers are
configured). 

Something subtle like a red vs. green or yellow throbber would be
intuitive here. The last thing we want is something like MS's "at least
one service failed during startup" because that sets off the user and
leads to the problem of ignoring or suppressing error messages. 

> I would say that's a bad example, but it's probably nit-picky. (You
> should be using several known good public time sources so it won't
> matter if one is down.) Maybe a better example would be a case where the
> DHCP server elsewhere on the LAN is down. I think I get your point,
> though, which is that now you know you need to login and (at the very
> least) run redhat-logviewer.
> 
> > The way that rhgb currently seems to work is that I will know unless I spend 
> > the time looking through the boot log every time.  If I am going to do that, 
> > then I might as well not run the graphical boot.
> 
> Agreed. It would probably also be a good idea for this icon to "persist"
> into the [gk]dm login screen, perhaps in the small information window at
> the lower right, so that the next person who logs in (and who has
> appropriate access rights) can check the status. It would also mean a
> visual cue to an admin walking by, or a "regular user" could notice on
> their own screen in the morning (say, after a power cycle in the
> building or their daily power-on after coffee) and call IT about it.

Another great idea, imho.