Graphical installer for the alternate CD?

[Tormod Volden]

Tormod Volden <lists.tormod <at> gmail.com> writes:
> What I have been doing on my 240MB (256MB minus 16MB for the graphics card)
> laptop is to log in to a "Failsafe xterm" session and launch ubiquity from
> there. This way to skip the gnome circus has always made it. You might prefer
> to start the metacity& window manager before starting ubiquity.
> 
> Maybe this would be easy enough to add as an option to the gdm session
> selection?


The below, inlined patch introduces the boot option "lowraminstall" which
boots the computer directly into Ubiquity in a minimal X session. I would
suggest sneaking this into Gutsy, as a hidden and unsupported possibility
for those who need it. If people are happy with it, the extra line in the
boot menu in isolinux.cfg can be added in a later version. Further
enhancements would be to avoid starting printing and network daemons etc
that are not needed during installation.

To test the patch, boot the Desktop CD with "lowraminstall" and
"break=bottom" and hand-patch the file (since "patch" is no longer on the
Desktop CD).


--- etc/gdm/Xsession.orig       2007-09-24 06:42:09.000000000 +0000
+++ etc/gdm/Xsession    2007-09-27 19:55:24.094561002 +0000
@@ -177,6 +177,11 @@ if [ -n "$GDM_LANG" ]; then
     fi
 fi
 
+# For running the installer in a minimal X session
+if grep -q lowraminstall /proc/cmdline; then
+  exec ubiquity
+fi 
+
 # The default Debian session runs xsession first, so we just do that for
 # "custom"
 if [ "x$command" = "xcustom" ] ; then