Installation report 1 for beta 1

[John Summerfied]

Acer Aspire 3503WLMI
    SiS chipset, shared memory graphics, 1200x800 "Crhystal Brite"
display, 512 Mbytes RAM, 80 GB disk, DVD-dl burner
    Atheros wireless
    Software modem
    No floppy
    No serial
As the baseline, SuSE 10 detects all the above and installs drives and
attempts
to configure everything including dialup.

I'm doing a manual install from a local http server, booting from the
boot.iso
supplied.

The first point I wish to make goes to the use of dhcp options. I raised
this
on anaconda-list, but as I wasn't sufficiently persuasive then I will
take it
up again. Anaconda/pump can (and last I looked) did set vendor-options. This
allows a DHCP client to ask for non-standard information from a DHCP server.
DHCP3, a standard part of recent Red Hat/Fedora and many other
distributions,
and generally available for Unix, can be configured to recognise the vendor
options and formulate its reply using that information.

"vendor" in this instance means Red Hat: organisation creating the vendor
option gets to describe (or not) what specific vendor options are
available and
what they mean.

In the case of Anaconda, it could be used to specify the source of a
kickstart
file, or to request information to fill in the information required to
complete
various on-screen forms. In this specific instance, where I am
testing/evaluating a new (beta) release, it would be convenient for me to
specify the source URI for the installation media, maybe
http://fedora.example.lan/beta1/i386/ - and, of course, timezone,
keyboard and
language choices.


Okay, I booted the CD, chose a graphical install, chose language and
keyboard,
told A where to get the stuff, progressed to the partitioning screen. It's
ghastly, see pic: http://redhat.cds.merseine.nu/imgp0474.jpg

I muddled my way through that (by double-clicking the Linux paritions and
making proper choices), and turned my attention to starting this report.

Now, the installation has died and there's a traceback. This brings me to
another gripe. I have a scrollable window of four lines. This
impossiblly small
(and persuaded me to not read the release notes). Someone needs to go to
usability school!

At the end of the traceback is the message, 'AtttributeError:
UrlInstallMethod
has no instance of switchMedia."

Fortunately, as I'm on a LAN where I have an account, I can "save to
remote,"
but the menu should tell me what the requirements on remote are: it could be
mounting NFS, CIFS, maybe using http POST (which makes some sense). I
guessed
ssh/scp and it seems I was close enough. The dialogue should (clearly)
give me
a choice of what to call the file on remote, the suggested name should
include
the host name (for those silly enough to do more than one at once), and then
tell me what name was used so I don't have to search (/tmp) for it.


A broadband user could be installing straight off the Internet. If I
were doing
that, I'd have no means of saving the anaconda dump.

Additionally, it looks like now I've saved to remote I'm now forced to
reboot.
I'd like to poke around a little first.

Log at http://redhat.cds.merseine.nu/FC5_B1_t1-anacdump.txt

Okay, I had a poke around. It seems that A's selected a screen resolution of
800x600 which goes to esplain why it's so hard to use. I've not had a
screen in
over ten years that couldn't do at least 1024x768. Can't something better be
automated/ _I_ _might_ be able to override it from the bootscreen, but not
everyone can do that: my boss installs OS X, but that would probably defeat
him.

Finally, when I allowed the installer to proceed, it said I could safely
reboot
(as if there were something to reboot to!) but didn't eject the CD.



Thoughts on future updates.
I was one of those testing the first release of Ubuntu, before going back to
when it was called "sounder" and the name "ubuntu" had not been cleared for
use.

I liked that program.
They had daily builds, so there was every prospect that problems reported
    today were fixed tomorrow or the day after.
There were many "betas" I just saw reference to "sounder 8" and as I
recall there
    were warty betas and release candidates after that.

To save download time, access was via rsync. It helped that only one CD
image
was involved, but it would still have worked well with a FC-sided DVD.
The team
didn't handle it as well as it might, at various times the name of the image
changed. For maximum ease of use the images needed to have constant
names and
locations, so "latest-daily-build.iso" "latest-beta.iso" (once there is
a beta)
etc. Also, for easy of tracking bugs, each build needs a unique
identifyer, in
this series, maybe 'FC-4.9.1.1' where the final number increases for each
build, the second last for each beta, release candidate and preview.

Then testers can download whichever milesstone suits, and the greater
sense of
action at the ranch promotes a feeling of excitement and involvement. And,
judging from the Ubuntu results, the outcome can be pretty spectacular.


Postscript
I thought to try a wireless network install. Booting with an Orinico 11b
card
causes a SEGV immediately (in the log) after "Running /sbin/loader" while
inserting it later leaves the installer (despite there being no wire in
place)
insisting on trying to use eth0.




-- 

Cheers
John

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