Release criteria proposal: stop caring about text mode firstboot

Adam Williamson awilliam at redhat.com
Wed Aug 17 07:02:56 UTC 2011


On Mon, 2011-08-08 at 16:18 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> 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!

No-one seemed opposed to this, so I've gone ahead and implemented it,
just in time for final Alpha validation.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net



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