sparc64-installer
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Launchpad entry: none yet
Packages affected:
Summary
This specs aims to improve installation on headless hardware where console can be utterly slow like on Niagara systems. (ANSI color at 9600 bps... welcome back to '90 BBS!)
Rationale
A lot of users have been complaining about the text installer speed on Niagara systems and for very good reasons. While most of them are aware that it is not an installer fault that the hw serial console is capped at 9600, it is still perceived as an installer issue that we need to address also based on the fact that other distros do offer alternative methods for installation.
Use cases
- Company foo will deploy 200 niagara servers with custom installations where pre-seed will not really fulfill their requirements.
They want to make sure that installing these systems will not take 4 hours each in order to meet customers demands.
Implementation
- Revive network-console code.
- Promote network-console to main.
- Enable network-console after network-config and only on user request.
- Evaluate across the development phase if it is worth to make it default when we detect that we are installing on a 9600 console.
Unresolved issues
- Including network-console in main might bloat a bit the installer size, but this should be addressable now by overrides per architecture and make this solution available only on sparc for the first evaluation.