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 1st-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 1st-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