torios-dev team mailing list archive

[Israel <israeldahl@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 01/30/2018 12:23 PM, Nio Wiklund wrote:
> Den 2018-01-30 kl. 19:15, skrev Israel:
>> On 01/30/2018 02:55 AM, psutton wrote:
>>>
>>> On 27/01/18 13:07, Nio Wiklund wrote:
>>>> Den 2018-01-26 kl. 23:21, skrev Israel:
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> I recently have been putting some work into OBI, as you all know.
>>>>>
>>>>> There have been a few issues related to how I built the base tarball
>>>>> that should be completely resolved.
>>>>>
>>>>> One thing I have recently decided to try is to test out the old
>>>>> '9W' ;)
>>>>> startup screen
>>>>>
>>>>> a.k.a text-mode-menu
>>>>>
>>>>> Basically it shows a menu allowing old computers to use the dialog
>>>>> interface for OBI without needing the entire ToriOS environment to
>>>>> load.  Of course ToriOS can still be run from that menu by
>>>>> choosing the
>>>>> graphical interface option.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is a pretty big change (visually) so I am going to put it in the
>>>>> next ISO to get everyone's feedback.
>>>>>
>>>>> The majority of my current work in OBI has been adding tabs to the
>>>>> code,
>>>>> as well as comments.  I did, however, change a major thing to install
>>>>> grub, rather than the old manual configuration method using sed.  We
>>>>> already install grub but I just moved it before other things that
>>>>> went
>>>>> in front of it previously.
>>>>>
>>>>> I hope to have this out soon, however Launchpad is slow to build
>>>>> things.
>>>>> It is likely bionic is taking a lot of resources right now, as
>>>>> well as
>>>>> all the kernel mess (Meltdown/Spectre).
>>>>>
>>>>> So, specifically Nio (9w) what do you think about my use of the
>>>>> text-mode-menu again (it has been many years since we've used it).
>>>>>
>>>> Hi Israel,
>>>>
>>>> Sure we can use the text-mode-menu again. It might be particularly
>>>> useful for
>>>>
>>>> 1. Very old computers and computer with very small RAM
>>>>
>>>> 2. Computers with a graphics chip/card, that does not work out of the
>>>> box with the built-in linux drivers.
>>>>
>>>> Please let us know, when there is something to test!
>>>>
>>>> Best regards
>>>> Nio
>>>>
>>> Text mode is a good idea,  debian still uses this as an option,  i know
>>> the Raspbian intaller for Raspberry Pi, desktop / pixel release  so it
>>> should not be a problem for people to install
>>>
>>> I am giessing there willbe
>>>
>>> boot - > bootmenu -- choice of text or gui mode  then from the gui live
>>> you can install and from the text mode you can install or basically
>>> move
>>> directly in to a OBI installer.
>>>
>>> Or something along those lines.
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>> Hey Paul,
>>
>> The original OBI ran the text-mode-menu at the startup.
>>
>> I think my issue is that it is trying to start X, but I am not fully
>> starting everything.
>>
>> What should happen is that instead of starting X it boots into this
>> dialog menu which allows you to choose what you want to do (here is the
>> abbreviated menu)
>>
>> Graphics mode (what we have been using)
>>
>> Text mode (low ram)
>>
>> quit to the shell
>>
>> reboot
>>
>> poweroff
>>
>>
>> I need to (probably) remove nodm (or disable it) to see if I can work
>> things to use the text mode menu.
>>
>>
>
> Hi Israel,
>
> You should be able to let it boot into a text screen, where you can
> use a dialog text menu for the alternatives. One alternative can be to
> run startx (providing the necessary program packages are installed.
>
> See for example this link (scroll down and you will find some dialog
> menus),
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/UEFI-and-BIOS/stable-alternative
>
>
> Best regards
> Nio

Hi Nio,

This is exactly what I was getting at!!

currently we are using nodm to get past the text login screen and into
the X environment (kind of like how lightdm bypasses the text login
screen for the GUI login screen)

But I am testing a build (actually I am building it right now) where I
simply disable nodm (which is automatically installed by torios-live and
then enabled).

So I will see if I can use the text-mode-menu from there.  I have also
converted that script to do a few things at the startup.  First it asks
for some general configurations (language, keyboard) then presents the
menu, and the menu, like the rest of OBI can be fully translated into
other locales using gettext (as we have done).  I am not entirely sure
how well this will all work, but I will be working on it.

I also am testing some changes I made to OBI.  I went ahead and
refactored the logging functions, and the "echo out" functions (they use
zenity/dialog to display some information) to be sourced from the main
'functions' file.  I renamed it to obi-functions (keeping the old one in
case I missed something somewhere) and caused the sub scripts to source
it and implement those functions calling them with their own function
name as an argument (so logging will be easier to trace to a specific
function/file)

My next goal is to refactor the mklub (in the separate mkp* scripts) and
test out using a single function to handle all of it.  Again my goals
with all this refactoring is to reduce the code complexity (multiple
redundant functions doing the same thing) for an ease of maintenance,
and to allow changes to be easy to implement.  I may eventually rework
all the GUI elements to be sourced in from another file, so I can
support an even wider range of dialog programs, though that is not a
priority, but something to consider (GTK keeps removing features and
making lots of things harder to do, so zenity may become unusable at
some point)

Anyhow, I will test a few more things before releasing this into the wild :)

-- 
Regards