Bug 533588

Summary:	text-only system should not require gfxboot, bootsplash, & splashy
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 11.2	Reporter:	white brian <brian>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	E-mail List <bnc-team-screening>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	forgotten_qMyteedNxa
Version:	Factory
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	x86-64
OS:	SUSE Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description white brian 2009-08-23 14:02:54 UTC

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Fresh install of 11.2 MS6
Software manager auto-adds gfxboot, bootsplash, splashy, and related branding packages, even when you taboo those packages.
These programs are not compatible with serial console and a text-only install should be able to exclude them. In the past, they were added by default, but it was possible to manually de-select and/or taboo them.
Now, it is possible to de-select them and prevent installation one time, but every time software manager runs, they are auto-added again. The taboo flag seems to have no effect.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. start with these packages not installed:
bootsplash
bootsplash-branding-openSUSE
liblzo2-2
libx86
splashy
splashy-branding-openSUSE
suspend

2. run yast software manager.

3. perform no actions in software manager, just select Accept without having selected any packages to install.

4. A popup will come up showing all of the above packages auto-selected as if they were dependancies of something.

5. Cancel. Search for and taboo each of those packages.

6. You can exit software manager normally now and the packages won't be installed.

7. Repeat starting at step 2 above. Same packages are auto-added again.

Ideally a text-only install choice should not even include these since they can cause problems on serial console. If you are remotely administering servers via serial console it's very important that it always works.

Comment 1 Ladislav Slezák 2009-09-07 14:07:13 UTC

The solver says: "pattern: enhanced_base-11.2-13.1.x86_64 requires bootsplash-branding-openSUSE".

So the base pattern requires the branding package.

Stephan?

Comment 2 Stephan Kulow 2009-09-07 14:10:28 UTC

yeah, it _does_ require it and I don't want people to install openSUSE without it. But as the reporter said: in the past it was possible to deselect it still, so the bug is not in the patterns. They work as designed.

Comment 3 Stephan Kulow 2009-09-07 14:13:39 UTC

actually the bug report as such is WONTFIX, because text-only install _should_ require gfxboot.

Comment 4 Shuang Qiu 2009-09-08 07:28:59 UTC

As comment#3 said,I will close this report.

Comment 5 white brian 2009-09-08 20:37:16 UTC

What about my serial consoles on servers thousands of miles away?

I need to be able to install/update/run-single-user servers via serial console.

When gfxboot tries to use the vga hardware, it breaks the serial console.
Sometimes only briefly while grub is running, which is bad enough since it means I can't operate grub, sometimes permanently until the hardware is power-cycled, and all points in between those two extremes depending on the quirks of the particular hardware involved.

gfxboot and splashy are not text-only, and I assert that there is definitely a need for a real text-only system.

It would be bad but tolerable if some required base package merely included or installed gfxboot and/or splashy, but did not actually use them by default on a text-only system.

Most _especially_ they should not be inserted automatically after they have been manually removed.

But even that would be a problem really. There is a simple reason I want them not-installed vs merely not-invoked.
If the binary exists at all, some poorly written scripts may detect that it is there and assume it should be used.
Other even more poorly written scripts may simply try to use it without even checking.
In both cases the safest thing is to simply not have the binary installed at all.

If a binary is not installed, it is impossible to even accidentally run it, and so it can't screw up my all-important console.

The functionality of my console is 18 million times more important than if that console displays an opensuse logo.

This should not be a difficult wish. I should be able to have this without a fight or without major hackery. Unless you are simply asserting that openSUSE is not advertised as being a suitable OS for servers.

Comment 6 Forgotten User qMyteedNxa 2011-04-29 21:11:07 UTC

i can follow the argumentation of white brain and i don`t understand why text-only install should require gfxboot.
ok, serial console is very specialized - but how exotic is plain old 80x25 vga text console ? i think it`s not too exotic. actually i`m having severe issues because of this graphics boot/console stuff. so either do handle automatic fallback to text console correctly or give a hint at boot how to boot without graphics mode.