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

Ged Murphy gedmurphy.maillists at gmail.com
Wed Jul 5 13:19:33 UTC 2017 

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:ros-dev-bounces at reactos.org] On Behalf Of Giannis Adamopoulos
Sent: 05 July 2017 14:03
To: ReactOS Development List <ros-dev at 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 at 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 at 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 at reactos.org
> > http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
> >

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