Improving the Fedora boot experience

[Peter Jones]

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 09:28:28AM -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:10:27 -0400
> Peter Jones <pjones at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > Honestly, I'd like to do this anyway - the grub2 gfxterm code seems to
> > cause nothing but bugs in later graphics setup.  That said, I'd rather
> > go back to not having it at all, but with a different plan than last
> > time.
> > 
> > The idea would be to have a positive indication from systemd that
> > we've gotten to some pre-defined point on the previous boot (say,
> > starting your login manager), and not to show you any menu unless the
> > previous boot didn't get that far.  So when you install a new kernel,
> > the process would look like:
> 
> ...snip reasonable plan... 
> 
> One downside: systemd can see that it started your display manager
> fine, but it can't tell that it's actually displayed correctly. I guess
> we can try this and see how often a case like that happens. 

That's true - we can always add more logic to define ways to tell that
we think it /hasn't/ worked, such as reboots without successfully
logging in, or flaling like a madman at ctrl+alt+f2 .

> > On BIOS machines I think we can still accomplish #1 and #2 as well,
> > but there's no guarantee of a way to disable firmware timeouts or
> > "press f2 for setup" screens and loading the usb stack.
> 
> If it's at all possible, I personally would vastly prefer "hold down
> any key" to get to the menu. 
> 
> rationale: 
> 
> a) It's very easy to document
> b) it avoids keymap / keyboard / locale issues.
> "I don't have function keys", etc. 
> c) if avoids people who have slow reaction time 
> "Hit F1 in 5 seconds"
> d) It means you can hold down the key and boot and don't need to send
> your full attention to it until it's at the grub menu. 
> (for some servers that take minutes to get to grub, it's very easy to
> get distracted, miss the window and have to reboot again). 

So, the problems with that when we implemented it on grub1 were
numerous, but basically they're all of one variety:

1) we have to clear the buffer at some point because BIOSes often leave
junk in them
2) it's unclear to the user when the buffers are cleared
3) if the user holds down the key, the BIOS complains that the key is
stuck,
4) if the user doesn't hold down the key, but just presses it, it's easy
to do so too early

So I'd really rather have it so that /under normal circumstances/, if the
user wants the non-default kernel or parameters, they tell us so before
rebooting.

-- 
        Peter