Release criteria proposal: stop caring about text mode firstboot

Adam Williamson awilliam at redhat.com
Mon Aug 8 23:18:56 UTC 2011


Hey, folks. So, Athmane noticed that text mode firstboot doesn't really
happen in Fedora 16, as it's 'expected' to in the new base test case:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Testcase_base_firstboot

we did a bit of investigation and found that this is kinda normal.
firstboot is in the base-x package group in comps. it doesn't get
installed if you do a regular text mode installation. So if you're doing
a minimal / text mode install, you don't get firstboot. I confirmed that
this is also the case in F15, and I'm pretty sure it's the same in F14
and all the way back. This is clearly 'intentional' at some level, and I
don't think anyone complained about it in f14 or f15.

It doesn't seem like a major problem, because text mode firstboot is
really pretty useless. It's nothing like graphical firstboot: what it
actually does is call /usr/bin/setup, which is a simple wrapper around a
couple of system-config tools. Notably, it's not a wizard, and AFAICT
has no ability to create a regular user account, which is probably the
most useful feature of graphical firstboot.

I've mailed the firstboot maintainers to see if it's actually worth
keeping text mode firstboot around at all, but whatever happens there,
I'd like to propose revising the criteria and test case such that we
don't really care about text mode firstboot any more.

So:

criterion "In most cases (see Blocker_Bug_FAQ), a system installed
according to any of the above criteria (or the appropriate Beta or Final
criteria, when applying this criterion to those releases) must boot to
the 'firstboot' utility on the first boot after installation, without
unintended user intervention. This includes correctly accessing any
encrypted partitions when the correct passphrase is supplied. The
firstboot utility must be able to create a working user account" would
be modified to read:

"In most cases (see Blocker_Bug_FAQ), a system installed according to
any of the above criteria (or the appropriate Beta or Final criteria,
when applying this criterion to those releases) must boot to the
'firstboot' utility on the first boot after installation, without
unintended user intervention, unless the user explicitly chooses to boot
in non-graphical mode. This includes correctly accessing any encrypted
partitions when the correct passphrase is supplied. The firstboot
utility must be able to create a working user account"

Installing without X would be considered 'explicitly choosing to boot in
non-graphical mode' for the purpose of the criterion.

The test case would have the phrase "After performing the test,
re-install in text mode, and repeat the test" removed.

Sound good? Or can anyone think of a better way to re-phrase the
criteria? Thanks!
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net



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