Usability of new graphical boot process...

[Derek P. Moore]

The new graphical boot process is purdy keen... 
However, it could use one little change to increase
its overall usability.

As the progess bar moves from left to right, the name
of the service that is attempting to start is shown
for a few seconds then faded away.  This is nice
eyecandy, but it's really inconvenient if a particular
service is taking forever or hanging indefinately.

If I'm not lucky enough to catch the name of the
service in the few seconds before it fades away, I'll
have no idea what's going wrong 'til I reboot and
devote 100% of my attention to watching the names of
the services before they fade away.

I brought this up in #fedora-devel, but thought I'd
post to the mailing list so this issue actually gets
some attention.

In #fedora-devel someone suggested that instead of the
names fading away after a few seconds, they could fade
from one into the next.  That sounds like a much more
sensible option if we really want fading eyecandy.

Okay, I'm done now,

Derek

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Sep 26, 2003, "Derek P. Moore" <derek.moore(a)sbcglobal.net&gt; wrote:

>  Okay, I'm done now, 
Not before it makes it to bugzilla :-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                 aoliva(a){redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva(a){lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist                Professional serial bug killer

[Bill Anderson]

On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 14:38, Derek P. Moore wrote:
>  The new graphical boot process is purdy keen... 
>  However, it could use one little change to increase
>  its overall usability.
>  
>  As the progess bar moves from left to right, the name
>  of the service that is attempting to start is shown
>  for a few seconds then faded away.  This is nice
>  eyecandy, but it's really inconvenient if a particular
>  service is taking forever or hanging indefinately.
>  
>  If I'm not lucky enough to catch the name of the
>  service in the few seconds before it fades away, I'll
>  have no idea what's going wrong 'til I reboot and
>  devote 100% of my attention to watching the names of
>  the services before they fade away. 
Did /var/log/bootlog go away??

Here is what mine said when things failed:
=============================
Sep  1 12:12:10 locutus sshd:  succeeded
Sep  1 12:12:08 locutus network: Bringing up interface eth0:  succeeded 
Sep  1 12:12:11 locutus crond: crond startup succeeded
Sep  1 12:12:12 locutus xfs: xfs startup succeeded
Sep  1 12:12:12 locutus anacron: anacron startup succeeded
Sep  1 13:18:46 locutus cupsd: cupsd: Child exited with status 1!
Sep  1 13:18:46 locutus cups: cupsd startup succeeded
Sep  1 13:18:58 locutus cups: cupsd startup succeeded
Sep  1 16:52:09 locutus postgresql: Starting postgresql service: 
succeeded
Sep  5 11:47:40 locutus iptables:  failed
Sep  5 11:47:40 locutus iptables:  failed
Sep  5 11:47:41 locutus iptables:  succeeded
Sep  6 22:22:58 locutus smb: smbd shutdown failed
Sep  6 22:22:58 locutus smb: nmbd shutdown failed
Sep  6 22:22:58 locutus smb: smbd startup succeeded
Sep  6 22:22:58 locutus smb: nmbd startup succeeded
Sep  6 22:23:38 locutus smb: smbd shutdown succeeded
===============================

I hope it didn't go away, I've got scripts that monitor that file and
email me if there were failures.

-- 
Bill Anderson
RHCE #807302597505773
bill(a)noreboots.com

[Bill Nottingham]

Bill Anderson (bill(a)noreboots.com) said: 
>  Did /var/log/bootlog go away?? 
No. If it has, that's a bug.

Bill

[Matt R. Jezorek]

>  If I'm not lucky enough to catch the name of the
>  service in the few seconds before it fades away, I'll
>  have no idea what's going wrong 'til I reboot and
>  devote 100% of my attention to watching the names of
>  the services before they fade away. 
Had the same problem myself while trying to see what was taking so long
>  
>  In #fedora-devel someone suggested that instead of the
>  names fading away after a few seconds, they could fade
>  from one into the next.  That sounds like a much more
>  sensible option if we really want fading eyecandy. 
That sounds good

-- 
Matt R. Jezorek <matt(a)bluelinux.org&gt;
Linux for Education

[Jonathan Blandford]

"Derek P. Moore" <derek.moore(a)sbcglobal.net&gt; writes:

>  As the progess bar moves from left to right, the name
>  of the service that is attempting to start is shown
>  for a few seconds then faded away.  This is nice
>  eyecandy, but it's really inconvenient if a particular
>  service is taking forever or hanging indefinately. 
Only 'interesting' services are shown -- the vast majority of them are
not.  The point of the fade is to prevent you thinking that it hung on a
step that it didn't actually hang on.  That being said -- it should only
fade if it has gotten past that stage.  I've been meaning to make that
change to the code for a while.

-Jonathan