New subject: About the bootcd and livecd, and the 1st-stage GUI setup

5 Jul 2017

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) &lt;gigaherz(a)gmail.com&gt; 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 &lt;hermes.belusca(a)sfr.fr&gt; 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
 >
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 > Ros-dev(a)reactos.org
 > http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
 > 

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