[anaconda][RFC][?master/f21-branch/rhel7-branch?][PATCH] Use tty1 for useful hints

David Shea dshea at redhat.com
Fri Nov 14 16:36:21 UTC 2014


On 11/13/2014 01:45 PM, Martin Kolman wrote:
> A while ago during an IRC discussion a friend mentioned that he recently tried to install Fedora
> but had some weird issues with his graphics hardware that left him staring at a black screen
> (apparently X kinda started but not completely, so the text mode fallback did not trigger). He tried
> various things (multiple media version, checking media checksum etc.) but always got the same behavior.

I X crashes, anaconda will die and you can get stuck staring at empty vt 
where X used to be. It sounds like that's what happened here. We do try 
to switch back to tty1 if anaconda crashes before meh is setup, and it 
would be nice to have some more helpful messages on the screen if that 
happens, but this might still be a case we don't handle. mclasen 
suggested a workaround a little while ago but I haven't tried converting 
that into a patch yet since it was so freaking gross, which he readily 
admitted (involved installing log handlers and looking for a particular 
string coming out of gdk). Maybe it's time?

>
> I asked him for logs and told him about text mode - unfortunately he already reinstalled the machine long ago
> with some other distro. But he mentioned that he tried to switch ttys, but he couldn't find any hints what
> might be wrong, where could he find the log files, about trying text mode, etc.
>
> That was when I realized that tty1, which could be the obvious choice of installer users in trouble currently
> only shows Anaconda version and has a lot of unused screen real estate. From there I got the idea to use tty1
> for displaying important hints that might help users that have installation issues find what when wrong and what
> to do now - that the shell is running TMUX, where to find logs, how to force text mode - and importantly -
> how to properly file bugreports. ;-)
>
> I see the patch as kind for request for comments/proof of concept and I'm looking forward to you feedback! :)
>
> Martin Kolman (1):
>    initial implementation
>
>   anaconda | 12 ++++++++++++
>   1 file changed, 12 insertions(+)
>



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