Re: A user point of view

[Thierry Laronde]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2000 at 03:32:40PM +0900, OKUJI Yoshinori wrote:
> From: Thierry Laronde <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: A user point of view
> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 23:10:01 +0200
> 
> > I agree that there is no safe way. But the panacea doesn't exist : it
> > would be just an opportunity, if the user has not obstinately screwed
> > the system, to recover a usable keyboard.
> 
>   That sounds reasonable, but I suspect that it is normally adequate
> to press Ctrl-Alt-Del (or run the command "reboot").

Yes, but as the GRUB is more than a simple bootloader --- it can already
be seen as a mini-OS allowing recovery and diagnosing [*] ---, I imagine
that some day perhaps, one will be writing in a ramdisk from the GRUB a
configuration file, and that if one reboots, all that is already done
will be lost.

Other utility : you have several entries in the menu : for example one
for mapping the keyboard in a strange way (for the user), something
fails, and you need to administrate (the special characters may be
difficult to have with some mappings) : it would be useful to remap to
the default by a single command. This can be also an issue if, indeed,
others commands can be run in the menu.lst (not in the entry), imagine
in order to map the keyboard for average users : a fallback can be
useful if the keyboard is mapped automatically when booting (that's also
an argument to not allow other commands to be automatically run ;).

> 
> > you need to map ASCII codes, is strange. Are there stranger keyboards
> > where the DEL and BS are not at the "same place" as in the qwerty US,
> > needing to remap them ?
> 
>   Yes. I have seen many odd keyboards. IMO, most of them are useless,
> though. :-p

;)
> 
> > 
> > Don't be mistaken : I know this is not easy. And I understand that this
> > is not of the higher priority, simply because you can already run these
> > entries... via the menu.
> 
>   When I say "I won't work on something", I mean that if you send a
> patch for it...

... but I will start by easier things (I run also FreeBSD and there are
some entries --- grub-install --- in the TODO list, that can be more
easy to deal with while I dive a little in the code...).

Regards,

* I'm a bit disappointed when I read : " Keep DOS near your computer,
because running FDISK /MBR can put a safe mbr back.". Hey ! Look at the
GRUB !
-- 
Thierry LARONDE <address@hidden>
10, rue du Bel Air, 74000 ANNECY - FRANCE/ Tel : 33.(0)4.50.67.46.61
/home du SDF (Site Debian Francophone) : http://www.polynum.com/sdf/