Re: [ros-dev] About the bootcd and livecd, and the 1st-stage GUI setup

[Ged Murphy]

Run or install? 
I think I prefer David's version.

- Install
- Try without installing
- Cancel and boot from disk
- Advanced options ...


-----Original Message-----
From: Ros-dev [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Giannis Adamopoulos
Sent: 05 July 2017 14:03
To: ReactOS Development List <ros-dev(a)reactos.org>
Subject: Re: [ros-dev] About the bootcd and livecd, and the 1st-stage GUI setup

I'd say that we should show:
- Run or install ReactOS
- Boot from hard disk
- Advanced options

Nothing more should be needed and the first option should be clear that can either lead to
a live environment or a setup.


David Quintana (gigaherz) <gigaherz(a)gmail.com> wrote on Tue, July 4th, 2017, 10:45
PM:
>   I feel like the boot menu is going to be far too busy
> for the end 
>  user. I'd go with something closer to
>  
>  blah blah:
>  
>     - Install Now
>     - Try without installing
>     - Show advanced options...
>  
>  where:
>  
>     - Install now -- boots into the graphical installer (no desktop unless
>     you cancel or something)
>     - Try without installing -- boots into livecd desktop (backed by RAM, I
>     guess)
>     - Show advanced options... -- opens a second-level menu with
>     - Text-mode installer
>        - Live boot without Ramdisk
>        - etc.
>  
>  
>  
>  On 4 July 2017 at 21:45, Hermès BÉLUSCA-MAÏTO <hermes.belusca(a)sfr.fr> wrote:
>  
>  > Hello everyone,
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > One of the long-term plan for ReactOS was to have a graphical 
>  > user-mode interface for the 1st-stage setup, similar to e.g. what 
>  > may be found in newer versions of Windows (Vista+), as an 
>  > alternative to our current 1st-stage setup in text-mode
>  >
>  > (note that I say “alternative”, not “replacement”, because both of 
>  > them can live together without fundamental changes to either ReactOS 
>  > or our ISO images, both of them can share core functionality, and 
>  > finally because some people may prefer the text-mode either for 
>  > unattended installations or for low-memory conditions).
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > You can find some information about the 1st-stage GUI setup here:
>  > https://reactos.org/wiki/First_Stage_GUI_Setup . In our source code, 
>  > it can be found in base/setup/reactos/ . Currently only most of the 
>  > screens have been implemented, while the core functionality is not 
>  > present. However this functionality can somehow be taken by reusing 
>  > the source code of USETUP (see my branch 
>  > https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos/branches/setup_
>  > improvements/base/setup/ ).
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Abstract (aka. TL;DR): I explain below the needed changes introduced 
>  > experimentally in the “setup-improvements” branch, revision 75273, 
>  > to generate an all-in-one ReactOS bootcd, that includes both the 
>  > 1st-stage text-mode setup + 1st-stage GUI setup alternative + 
>  > live-demo functionality. This is meant to replace our currently 
>  > separated “bootcd” / “livecd” ISOs, where the latter currently do 
>  > not offer the possibility to install ReactOS. Some currently known potential
> problems are evoked.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Images: Proposed BootCD contents : http://i.imgur.com/EBA6JHd.png ; 
>  > Proposed Boot Menu : http://i.imgur.com/14n5Ryi.png .
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Having a 1st-stage GUI setup also means that it’ll also use the 
>  > already-existing functionality that we offer in our “Live-CD” ISOs.
>  > Currently, the “Live-CD” ISOs we provide only allow for 
>  > demonstration purposes, while the ReactOS installation proper is 
>  > found in our so-called “Boot-CD” ISOs (which currently only contain 
>  > text-mode setup). Thus, the 1 st-stage GUI setup, as an alternative 
>  > to the 1st-stage setup in text-mode, means that both ISOs can be 
>  > merged all in one, and we won’t have to make a distinction between 
>  > both: they will be able to offer both the 1 st-stage in text mode 
>  > AND a graphical mode (à la “Live-CD”) where it is possible to choose 
>  > whether to test ReactOS in demo mode, or to install it via the GUI setup.
>  >
>  > Such an all-in-one ISO capability was already present in the trunk 
>  > under the name “hybridcd”, but was used only when we built ISO 
>  > images for the public events where ReactOS participated (FOSDEM, 
>  > CLT, …). But now, having the setup process both in text mode and in 
>  > graphics mode, in addition to the Live-CD demonstration capability, 
>  > really suggests just using the all-in-one ISO and stop doing the “Boot-CD” (aka.
> only setup) vs. “Live-CD”
>  > (aka. only demo) separation. We would just generate only one type of 
>  > ISO that contains everything.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > With that in mind, I have committed in my branch 
>  > “setup_improvements”, in revision 75273 : 
>  > https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos?view=revision&
>  > revision=75273 such changes to be able to only build an ISO that 
>  > contains everything. These changes are minimal, in the sense that I 
>  > haven’t purposelessly changed the names of the build targets just to 
>  > be fancy. Such changes may be done later, but not now.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > The needed changes are the following: First, the build target that 
>  > will generate the all-in-one CD is called “bootcd”, because this 
>  > also was the main build target for ISOs before the change. Second, I 
>  > completely remove the “hybridcd” build target, because its 
>  > functionality are now absorbed by “bootcd”. Third, the build target 
>  > “livecd” is reduced to its strict minimum. For the sake of building 
>  > a RAMDISK boot drive (see comments after), I continue to generate an 
>  > ISO for “livecd”. But I’ve changed the generated name to 
>  > “liveimage.iso”, to emphasize the point that it has to be understood 
>  > as a (virtual) disk image for RAMDISK purposes, not just as a ISO 
>  > image. Note that I haven’t renamed the build target “livecd” to, 
>  > say, “liveimage” to reduce my commit changes (such a renaming may be 
>  > done later). The “livecd” target builds a list of files that need to 
>  > be present in the image. The generated liveimage.iso is no-more a 
>  > bootable ISO, I’ve removed inclusion of freeloader + El-Torito boot-sector + the
> USB-ISO-Hybrid functionality for it.
>  >
>  > The “bootcd” target has been slightly changed in order to include 
>  > the liveimage.iso as a file (for RAMDISK), and to also add the 
>  > contents of this image in a flattened tree within the bootcd iso: 
>  > the two directories “Profiles” and “reactos”.
>  >
>  > The 1st-stage text-mode setup is kept, as said before, but its 
>  > corresponding files + the installation CAB source + the 1st-stage 
>  > GUI setup application proper goes into a (renamed) directory called 
>  > “i386”, corresponding to installation files for an i386 installation 
>  > (technically,
>  > 1 per architecture when we’ll have a ReactOS ported to other archs). 
>  > These files cannot be present in the same “reactos” directory as the 
>  > ones from the flattened LiveImage, because some of the files are 
>  > different (smss.exe, registry, etc…) Our FreeLdr knows from where to 
>  > boot the 1st-stage text-mode (from i386), as well as the Live-demo 
>  > in graphics mode (from reactos).
>  >
>  > I need to adjust the code of few setup components for them to stop 
>  > relying on hardcoded “reactos/” path, and instead use a more 
>  > “dynamic” (determined at runtime) path.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > NOTE FOR DEVS/SYSADMINS: The “bootcdregtest” build target, 
>  > generating the special ISO that is fed to our test bots, remains 
>  > exactly the same, and the files contained in the generated ISO have not changed.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > NOTE about the RAMDISK feature: I enabled it so that a user can 
>  > remove the demo media (CD, …) and reuse the drive for other 
>  > purposes, while still being able to use ReactOS. Of course this 
>  > requires a large amount of RAM available. And that’s also why I 
>  > include the flattened liveimage files so that one can use the demo 
>  > without the RAMDISK (when few memory is available).
>  >
>  > As is currently implemented, this makes the ReactOS all-in-one 
>  > bootcd large (it gains a good 100 MB) due to duplicated space (the 
>  > flattened files, plus the same inside “liveimage.iso”). I cannot do 
>  > better (unless ditching either the RAMDISK, or keeping it but not 
>  > include the flattened
>  > files) because ReactOS currently doesn’t have a way to boot from 
>  > disk images **that are not meant to be a RAMDISK**. The day when 
>  > this difficulty is removed, a single disk image could be used either 
>  > as the RAMDISK or the (non-removable) installation.
>  >
>  > A second remark is that I don’t plan to have the 1st-stage GUI setup 
>  > available when booting ReactOS in RAMDISK mode because, as a 
>  > consequence of its current implementation, I would otherwise need to 
>  > duplicate the installation CAB source in the RAMDISK image too, making it again
> larger.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > NOTE about the FreeLdr Boot Menu: Since ReactOS is not that stable 
>  > currently, we like to boot it in debug mode, and redirect the output 
>  > to a serial port (usually COM1). However some people don’t have 
>  > serial ports on real hardware, so we propose to boot with debug 
>  > output redirected to screen. However this may slow ReactOS down, so 
>  > we also like to boot ReactOS with debug mode disabled. That’s why I 
>  > proposed the declination of these boot modes for each ReactOS 
>  > installation contained in the BootCD (Live+Setup, with or without 
>  > RAMDISK, and with debug enabled or not). The problem is that it 
>  > clutters a lot the boot menu. A remedy would be to implement in 
>  > FreeLdr the functionality of editing **existing** boot entries to 
>  > change their associated boot options, so that one could add by hand 
>  > the options to enable (or disable) debugging. This is currently 
>  > unimplemented. The only implemented feature is to set up a new boot entry on the fly
> to boot ReactOS afterwards.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > NOTE for regress-testers: Possible remark that I may hear: “I only 
>  > care about installing ReactOS (perhaps just in unattended mode) and 
>  > I don’t care at all about the GUI setup nor about the Live-demo 
>  > thingie, and your new BootCD is too large. I want to be able to 
>  > download & use the good-old bootcd for regress-testing.” . So what 
>  > to do? Since we currently build and store the “bootcdregtest” ISOs, 
>  > but are not publicly available through our www.reactos.org/getbuilds 
>  > interface, I would suggest here to make them available to people, so 
>  > that those who want to quickly DL and/or install/regress-test 
>  > ReactOS could use these ISOs instead (which are really just the good 
>  > old BootCDs, but with unattended installation enabled **and** with 
>  > our test-suite included). They are not that much large, just a bit more than the old
> regular bootcd.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Please let me know whether you have other 
>  > remarks/comments/questions/suggestions/etc…
>  > to make the new BootCDs better.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Best,
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Hermès
>  >
>  > _______________________________________________
>  > Ros-dev mailing list
>  > Ros-dev(a)reactos.org
>  > http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
>  > 
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