On Mon, 6 Jul 2020 at 07:38, Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > btw, sd-boot has a few tricks up its sleeve: if during boot you keep > > > "w" pressed down it will automatically boot into windows, similar if > > > you keep "l" pressed down it will automaticall boot into linux, "a" > > > will boot into macos, all without showing any UI at all. This means > > > the boot menu can be hidden entirely during boot with a zero timeout, > > > but you can still boot into a specific boot entry. > > > > That's actually awful, in my opinion, > > Why? It's nice to have them and I can't see any downsides. > It isn't that you put the keyboard strokes, it is that you are saying you can do a zero-timeout without problems. The assumption being that you are saying this is what should be a default.. and now you say there are no downsides. I assume that people are talking past each other, but in case not, there are always problems 1. Various systems blank out keyboard strokes in case of stuck key. I have seen this on a lot of servers, workstations and some laptops. Basically hold a key too short and it gets cleared, hold a key too long and the system assumes stuck key and ignores keyboard for 30 seconds. 2. Other systems blank out keyboard strokes from before the beginning of OS boot sections and expect that your OS will give you time to press some keystrokes before booting. My parents 2 laptops with different vendors (Dell and ASUS) do that. [They wanted to try what their son works on... and I found this out while trying to debug things remotely over the years. We push out bad kernels every now and then] 3. Some hardware is controlled by things like Serial over LAN (SOL) which a lot of mgmt ports use. That puts a limit on repeated character strokes and will break a connection and such. I have spent way too long this last week dealing with Fedora 30+ systems with short boot menus over serial over lan and having to power cycle the server (a 3 to 5 minute wait) to get back to the boot menu for one more attempt of a 2 second keyboard section which SOL may scrub. Trying to debug a problem over a phone with a parent is similar. 4. Screen flickering and paused screens. The lenovos I have do weird things when attached to external monitors. Screens will stick on monitors during the boot up sequence sometimes.. or they will do sync tests which drop the entire video for 3-5 seconds at a time. I can see where a zero timeout is a good thing on hardware which allows it and if the person is ok with it. It is a complete nightmare on hardware or remote support. > > and objectively undiscoverable.. > > Indeed. Would be nice to show these hotkeys somewhere. Extend the > help line which is shown when you press '?' for example. > Again, in a zero boot timeout how would hotkeys be seen? A lot of systems (even new ones :( ) are still recovering from hardware video tests with screens flashing and such. If I have an external monitor hooked up to my laptop, I rarely see the grub menu with a default timeout.. the screen steadies only by the time the system has reached the enter a password to decrypt drive. My issues here are not with sd-boot or grub. It is with assuming that a fast seen by menu is a good thing by default. I think it would be great as a config option to shoot yourself in the foot by choice.. but I spend too much time debugging other people's problems to like it by default :). -- Stephen J Smoogen. _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
