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) gigaherz@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@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

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