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Date:      Sun, 7 Oct 2012 11:44:25 -0700
From:      Devin Teske <devin.teske@fisglobal.com>
To:        Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net>
Cc:        Devin Teske <dteske@freebsd.org>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: New Boot Loader Menu
Message-ID:  <DB1B1B71-84B3-4096-BE52-7630CB74762F@fisglobal.com>
In-Reply-To: <20121007183433.000026a6@unknown>
References:  <0655B56F-AD43-402B-872C-568378E650F9@fisglobal.com> <20121007183433.000026a6@unknown>

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On Oct 7, 2012, at 9:34 AM, Alexander Leidinger wrote:

> On Sat, 6 Oct 2012 16:48:50 -0700 Devin Teske
> <devin.teske@fisglobal.com> wrote:
>=20
>> Hello,
>>=20
>> I've been working on a new boot loader menu system.
>>=20
>> This is what is in HEAD, CURRENT, and RELENG_9 at the moment:
>>=20
>> http://twitpic.com/b1pkll/full
>> in color: http://twitpic.com/b1pkz1/full
>>=20
>>=20
>> I'd like to propose the following replacement to the above:
>>=20
>> http://twitpic.com/b1pll5/full
>> in color: http://twitpic.com/b1plxi/full
>>=20
>> The boot options have been whisked away into a sub-menu (see below):
>>=20
>> http://twitpic.com/b1pm51/full
>> in color: http://twitpic.com/b1pme8/full
>>=20
>>=20
>> What does everybody think?
>=20
> IMO single user mode should be in the first level. I never had to use
> the other options, but I often used single-user mode. Another reson is
> that we tell to install the world in single-user mode. While I've
> always installed the world in multi-user mode, we should make it
> easy/fast to do it the recommended way.
>=20

The documentation on how to get into single-user mode would need to be chan=
ged from:

Press 's' and 'ENTER'

to instead:

Press 'o' then 's' then 'ENTER'

NOTE: The menu/submenu infrastructure hooks "ENTER" in at the lowest level =
possible, so at any time=85 ENTER =3D=3D boot (regardless of whether a menu=
 or submenu has a "Boot" menu item and/or regardless of whether any menuite=
m has hooked in the ASCII keycode for ENTER; ENTER =3D=3D boot no matter wh=
ere you are in the menu at any time). Thus, it is not required to "go back"=
 to the main menu to boot -- you can jump to the options submenu, make your=
 changes, and then boot with those options by pressing ENTER.

Please note that 16+ months ago we had to update the documentation for my l=
ast enhancement to the loader menu. It used to be:

Press 's'

and changed to:

Press 's' then 'ENTER'

because we went from a stateless menu system to a stateful menu system. The=
 driving force behind that was indeed the fact that with the old stateless =
menu, you could not ever boot with combinations-of-options (but rather you =
could only boot with options that were presented -- unless of course you dr=
opped to the interactive prompt and did the dirty work yourself).




> I see a lot of value for submenus to chose another boot device /
> partition, specially with ZFS boot environments.
>=20

Agreed.

But it's when we add that submenu to the main menu that things now get so c=
rowded that a redesign would be absolutely necessary if we were to add any =
other option.
--=20
Devin

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