VectorLinux 6.0-alpha2 INSTALLER

[toothandnail]

Code:

Why would anybody want a gui installer? In fact when I first installed VL-5.8 I thought it was a gui.

Please be patient with the gui installer this all new code from the ground up and only being chumed out by M0e and Uel and they are learning as they go along. Uel has asked me to put up help wanted for more gambas programmers as it is easy to learn but the more eyes the better. In fact Moe is willing to teach the basics on any irc channel just to get you involved. So if you have ever had an inclination to learn a little programming this would be a great time to dive in as we could sure use the help.

I'm not fussed about a GUI installer either way, but I would be happy to help. Unfortunately, IRC is probably not a very viable option for me at the moment (while I have some time to spare while at work, I don't have any access to IRC from there). I'm also a bit confused - the last Gambas package I tried was fairly badly broken. Can you point me to a full working package? I'll happily see how much I can learn from that and some of the available source....

paul.

[M0E-lnx]

The gambas packages in the repositories work perfectly fine for me on vl-light 5.9

Gambas2-2.8.2 is out already with some more bugfixes... but the 2.8.0 is in the repos iirc

They are in veclinux-current/packages. So add that to your gslapt or slapt-get and then you can install them via these tools

as far as your irc issue, I guess the devs could hook us up with a private board here if that seems like a good idea

[toothandnail]

The gambas packages in the repositories work perfectly fine for me on vl-light 5.9

Gambas2-2.8.2 is out already with some more bugfixes... but the 2.8.0 is in the repos iirc

They are in veclinux-current/packages. So add that to your gslapt or slapt-get and then you can install them via these tools

Ok. Last time I looked, there were some problems with the testing Gambas package. Haven't had time to look since....

Next time I can get the machine on the net, I'll download whatever is in the repo and have a look.

as far as your irc issue, I guess the devs could hook us up with a private board here if that seems like a good idea

  Let me have a look at what is there and I'll get back to you. My only programing experience is with REXX (plus a bit of simple Bash scripting), so I'll see what I can find in the Gambas docs and look at some of the source.

paul.

[kidd]

Unfortunately, a couple of errors when installing vl 6, but in old textmode installer (hosted-install)

When trying to install lilo, I'm asked where I want it to be installed (MBR,sda, floppy, skip lilo install (IIRC)) If I choose MBR, the installer thinks I wanted to quit the installation, and asks me for confirmation on quitting installer.  I had to choose "skip lilo installation" to be able to continue the installation.

When I rebooted for the first time, vl hanged when showing me the first vasm configuration screen (my keyboard does not even respond to CAPS LOCK pressing).  After reboot, I get a console login, I login as root (without password) and then I can launch vasm with no problems at all.

If you need more details, just tell me

Cya

[thecdn]

On the first page of the installer, "Scanning system for installable medium. Please wait....."  I got the following error:

Installer
The application has raised an unexpected error and must abort.
[45] File or directory does not exist.
MdlCore.?0


Is there an md5sum for this download? I couldn't find one.

Edit to add:
I downloaded this again, burned it again, and got the exact same result.

My system:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2
XFX PVT71PUQF3 GeForce 7900GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16
Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB SDRAM DDR2 800
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard

[sparkyhall]

Brilliant......this one boots from the cd for me unlike the first alpha !!

The new installer is really starting to look and feel really nice now and I just love the way I can play Invaders, Xgalaga, Freecell or Tetris while Vector installs and this takes me nicely into the first issues that I have found:-

The clock on the panel is 6 hrs behind the time set on my pc, I guess this has something to do with the region of the devs so it may be better to remove the clock altogether or at least until the region is known.

In the start menu clicking on "Log out" reboots the pc so I think it would be better if this was removed from the menu as I would only expect to shutdown or reboot after aborting an OS install.

Now to the installer.......If you click on the "Exit Install" button you end up at a minimal desktop with no obvious way of restarting the install.....I would think it would be better to offer shutdown or reboot options instead.

To make things more user friendly the disk partition text above Gparted should mention the need for quiting from Gparted via the drop down menu after the partitioning is complete.

I wont cover the fact that choosing not to install Lilo fails because others have already done this......but I will mention that there is no check on the label length given for the Lilo menu entry and if you enter something too long Lilo fails to install leaving the user with a system that fails to boot to the new Vector install, very frustrating and why not offer grub as an option?

Selecting the time zone has also been covered but is it really necessary to select the time zone followed by clicking set time zone followed by clicking OK followed by clicking next. Why not just highlight next after clicking your desired time zone?

The same goes for the setting root password......far to may items to click just to set a password.

Setting the user password is inconsistent with previous Vector installs. Because there are only two people using my PC I normally choose to have user names without a password which normally involves simply hitting enter for each password on Vector......not so with the new installer......it complains that I must enter a password and then tells me that Vector has been installed. I then continued with the install only to find that I only had root as an option in kdm and there was no icon associated with root. If I re-install and enter a password for user the icon for root appears.

On the subject of  "Vector has been installed" this implies to me that the installation is complete and ready to use but not so as Vector then continues to configure after a reboot which seems to take a very long time and then finally leaves me at a text based log-in. To be honest I would be happy with this if I had been informed about it before hand.

Chris

[kc1di]

I've tried installing VL 6.0 Alpha 2 on three different machines here the GUI does not work out well on any of them.  it get to the point where it says starting GUI and the the screen goes crazy just lines.  just does not seem to work for me.  think perhaps a choice ought to be given to choose the old style installer if the gui does not work.. I have no problem get to it but a newbie would never find it.

just my 2 cents worth..
will keep testing ..

[shahgols]

Not sure if this has been reported, since I didn't read this thread.

Well, first and foremost, thank you to all who are working on this fine distro.

The problem I had during installation happened when I was creating a new user.  As the user name I entered "Afshin".  After entering the password, etc., I clicked on Create User and I get a message that the user creation failed due to the uppercase in the login name.  The installer then vanished all together, VL rebooted, and started installation from the step AFTER the user creation step.  So I was never able to create the user "afshin". 

A couple of things to add:

1.  The installer started after a long wait...I thought that the system had frozen.
2.  Why does it take such a long time to install VL whereas other distros are much faster?

[Pita]

1.  The installer started after a long wait...I thought that the system had frozen.
2.  Why does it take such a long time to install VL whereas other distros are much faster?

That's what happened to one guy I gave VL CD for installation. I wanted to bring him to Linux. He aborted the installation thinking it had hung.

[toothandnail]

The gambas packages in the repositories work perfectly fine for me on vl-light 5.9

Gambas2-2.8.2 is out already with some more bugfixes... but the 2.8.0 is in the repos iirc

They are in veclinux-current/packages. So add that to your gslapt or slapt-get and then you can install them via these tools

as far as your irc issue, I guess the devs could hook us up with a private board here if that seems like a good idea

Sorry, slow again. I've got the latest Gambas package from the repos installed (though it is still not picking up all the deps, which is what slowed me down.

Where is the installer source? I've not had a lot of time with it yet, but I'm looking at a few projects, and would be interested to see how much sense I can make out of the source.

paul.

[M0E-lnx]

Where is the installer source? I've not had a lot of time with it yet, but I'm looking at a few projects, and would be interested to see how much sense I can make out of the source.

paul.

Source is available via SVN

Code:

svn co http://vinstall-ng.googlecode.com/svn/branches/iVL vl-installer

I'm sure it'll make sense... gambas syntax is almost English

[wcs]

Just installed this one.
Very nice and a big thank you to the devs.

Issues I found have been mentioned in this thread.

But the most important thing is that when it go to the "end" of the gui installer, the screen that said "loading gui installer appeared again, and then my monitor went berserk, with big blue bars all over the place... then I realised this was actually the text installer, but I could barely discern what was going on.
Sometimes I could make out a word or two and that got me through the choices (I must know the vector installer pretty well now  )
When the X screen came up, I elected the "nv" driver (I think... at least that was what I intended) and then the screen went fine.
After reboot I ran VASM and did the autoconfiguration again and that seems to have worked just fine.

Other than that:

1. Very nice addition, M0E with the Ctrl-Alt-+ and minus foo resolutions. Perhaps this instruction should appear on the first page (or all pages) in case the right resolution isn't automatically selected, or even better, there could be a small indication of what the resolution that is currently in use is.

2. The reason I'm focusing on this is that I think the installer didn't get my 1440x900. Things look... ugly, for the lack of a better word. I think it's just stretched which makes the fonts weird as well.

3. The Back button didn't work after I had been to the gparted screen and clicked next.

4. I think the Menu on the left hand corner is great, although perhaps it would be nice to have a proper taskbar, instead of hiding it away. Also, time was wrong (like someone else mentioned); and perhaps two virtual desktops aren't really necessary.

5. Total progress stayed in 0% for ages, and only started moving after the first (long) step was completed. Then, close to the end, it moved from about 50% to 100% in just a blink of an eye.

6. The scroll bars in the list of packages to install were a bit strange as there was a lot of empty space both top-bottom and left-right (perhaps down to resolution, as well?)

7. Some words were cut, either in options or in tabs, as if the boxes weren't wide enough to contain them.

Thank you very much for this!
It's exciting to see great improvements from version to version.

[M0E-lnx]

That is definitely a resolution problem. And one that is not up to me to fix. Every installation will have different hardware... I'm writing the installer so it works in an 600x800 resolution. I think that is the worse case scenario you can get when you are running on the vesa driver.
Beyond that, it's up to Xorg and the drivers.

[wcs]

The thing about the text installer part being almost unreadable seems to have something to do with my setup.
It is common for, instance, for other Vector versions to show that on thr framebuffer boot, but only on the first boot to a new system (then it's fine from then on).

Only with this alpha, that actually affected the text installer part, so I couldn't really be sure what I was picking.

Thanks, again.

[wcs]

1. Very nice addition, M0E with the Ctrl-Alt-+ and minus foo resolutions. Perhaps this instruction should appear on the first page (or all pages) in case the right resolution isn't automatically selected, or even better, there could be a small indication of what the resolution that is currently in use is.

I only realised now that the resolution change is actually an X thing... 
I thought you had coded it!