Bug #2982
ncurses installer fails silently
0%
Description
after every installation step of parabola install.sh, the console shell get immediately replaced by ncurses installation interface, truncating possibly end error messages behind. it would be nice if there is a stop in like "the command is finished, press "enter" to go to next installation step" so user had a time to spot and make sure there is no error message in console shell occured.
a common issue like this is when pacman fail because of pgp signature error but user had already drawn into ncurses installation interface again and had no idea wheter the command executes successfully or not that might lead into total installation failure especialy for newbies and those who still in learning stage, if they can spot an error at least they know where is something wrong and not just bump installation fail into bugtracker.
Related issues
History
Updated by bill-auger about 2 years ago
none of the text is replaced or deleted - you can scroll back
to see everything that happened in previous steps
Updated by telur almost 2 years ago
isnt half end of scrollback buffer is occupied/truncated by next ncurses menu displayed ?
though this is my past experience and i dont have the install.sh anymore.
anyway im just figure out putting this perks in each command step will ask user to press enter before next ncurses menu fill the screen so user can view the scrollback buffer freely before going into next step.
...
- bash stop in prompt
read -p "command finished, press "enter" to go to next step"
...
Updated by bill-auger almost 2 years ago
one of the first things i noticed when i first used parabola was
how terrible that installer is
the real problem you are pointing at is that the installer can
fail silently; but then continue, although it makes no sense
to continue - the real solution is to detect errors and quit
with a meaningful error message
last year, i re-wrote it almost completely - the new version
will dump a back-trace indicating exactly which command failed,
and then exit gracefully
so, i was not denying the problem - only i did not mention that
this problem is already known, and a good solution is mostly
completed - i have not had the time to debug it thoroughly yet
if you have good shell debugging skills, feel free to try it out
- i dont remember how well debugged it is yet - IIRC, you
would need only the files in the .session/ dir and start it
with 'session-init.sh' - bear in mind that it is a dangerous
script, which runs as root; so it is best to experiment in a VM
https://git.parabola.nu/parabolaiso.git/tree/configs/profile/root-image/root/.session?h=unified
Updated by telur almost 2 years ago
yes silent fail might be most apporiate case, sorry if my engliz is bad :)
Updated by bill-auger almost 2 years ago
- Status changed from unconfirmed to in progress
- Subject changed from provide a stop in command for parabola install.sh to ncurses installer fails silently
Updated by bill-auger almost 2 years ago
- Related to Bug #2537: openrc gui installer is broken added