[RFR] Restructuring of kernel selection in base-installer

On Friday 20 July 2007 07:45, Frans Pop wrote:
> Author: fjp
> Date: Fri Jul 20 05:45:18 2007
> New Revision: 48485
>
> Log:
> * Drop preprogrammed kernel defaults as that mechanism is no longer used.
> * Restructure kernel selection to allow for preseeding.
> Preseeding "none" to skip installing a kernel is supported.
> * If we could not determine any reasonable default kernel, ask the
> question at critical priority.
>
> Modified:
> trunk/packages/base-installer/debian/bootstrap-base.templates
> trunk/packages/base-installer/debian/changelog
> trunk/packages/base-installer/debian/templates-arch
> trunk/packages/base-installer/library.sh

As this change is somewhat invasive, I thought it best to explicitly ask for comments, especially from Colin (with his Ubuntu hat on).

The old mechanism to set default kernels in templates-arch per kernel major version has IMO become completely redundant. In practice it was no longer being used at all and we have an excellent and much more flexible kernel selection mechanism that replaced it. The defaults we still have left (kernel-image and linux-image) are even invalid. So basically I have just dropped these templates and renamed the template we currently use for the actual selection, b-i/kernel/which-kernel, to base-installer/kernel/image.
If someone thinks the dropped templates would still be usefull, they could still be added back in the new structure quite easily.

This change also prepares the way to support preseeding. Up till now users were basically unable to preseed which kernel to use. This patch makes that possible in the most natural way: using the base-installer/kernel/image template. Preseeding "none" - in case you don't want to install a kernel - is supported too. As a safety measure, I unset the seen flag if an invalid value is preseeded.

I've tested the changes, and it all seems to work well.

I will also commit a patch that changes the order of kernels in the selection list. The order is currently reversed to display more recent kernel first. It also results in "686" kernels being displayed before "486" kernel, and in vserver kernels being displayed before any others.

As we do now set good defaults for almost all situations and the question rarely gets displayed, I feel this is no longer functional. IMO it's better to just have the list in its "natural" order.

Cheers,
FJP

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