Re: Graphical Installer - Call for Testing.

[John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au>]

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Thanks for taking the time to do this.

On Fri, Jan 07, 2017 at 03:53:17PM -0500, myglc2 wrote:
     
     This is looking really great! I tried ...
     
     http://web.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/software/guix/guixsd-graphical-installer-x86-64-linux
     
     ... on the headless server where I run GuixSD. I experienced these issues:
     
     ATTEMPT 1
     
     I started with a previously partitioned disk. I selected the 'Headless
     server' option. I did not modify the config. The install completed w/o
     errors. WOW! After restarting, I logged in to root and looked around. I
     was a bit disappointed that no default user was created. So I figured I
     needed to edit the config.scm file. But I didn't see it in /etc where I
     hoped it would be. 
     
Odd!  It should have been there.  I wonder what went wrong?


     Suggestions:
     
     1) Add a user configuration menu/form?

That should be fairly straightforward.  But I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for
people to add them after the system is installed and run guix system reconfigure ?

     2) save the config file in an obvious place?

I will have to find out what went wrong and fix it.


     3) install emacs?

I would be reluctant to do that by default:

Firstly it's a slippery slope.  The next person will say "No! install vi! or nano, or ....".

Secondly, I think the intended way for Guix to be configured is to have 
the system profile relatively sparse.  Editors belong in the user profiles.

Perhaps we could add a page which would allow users to add arbitrary packages
to the system profile.

     
     ATTEMPT 2
     
     This time I tried to set up the HD from scratch. I successfully deleted
     old partitions and created new partitions. It was not clear how much I
     needed to know (e.g., do I need to mark a partition bootable?)

Since I'm currently just execing cfdisk,  I don't have much control over that.  But 
hopefully there's be some nice Guile bindings for parted soon ...
     
     Then I got stuck in "Allocate disk partitions".  I could enter a '/'
     mount point. I could 're-create' the file system. 'Continue' took me
     back to "select a partition". But I couldn't figure out how to get back
     to the main menu/form to continue the installation.  I guess 'Go-Back'
     is supposed to do this, but it was a noop for me.

It's clear that this part of the user interface needs work to make it simpler
and more intuitive.


Thanks again for the feedback.

J'
     
     

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