#2980 PR merged: SYSLINUX timeout configurable

Labels: enhancement, fixed / solved / done

codefritzel opened issue at 2023-05-05 06:57:

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Pull Request Details:

  • Type: Enhancement

  • Impact: Low

  • How was this pull request tested?
    manually on Ubu2204

  • Brief description of the changes in this pull request:
    This PR makes the SYSLINUX timeout at OUTPUT=ISO configurable.

This setting can save time during tests. Especially if you are too lazy to start the graphical VNC console of a VM. 😃

jsmeix commented at 2023-05-05 07:18:

@codefritzel
thank you for your enhancement
that provides final power to the user
at one more place where things were hardcoded before!

jsmeix commented at 2023-05-05 07:19:

@rear/contributors
I would like to merge it next Monday afternoon
unless there are objections from you.

schlomo commented at 2023-05-05 09:24:

If you see a big value in setting the boot loader timeout separate from the general user input timeout then I'd love to see a unified variable for that, which is recognised by all our boot methods (ISO with syslinux or with UEFI, PXE, USB, GRUB ...). Having different variables for the same purpose for different boot loaders is not user friendly IMHO.

If you don't want to put in that effort then I'd suggest to simply use the USER_INPUT_TIMEOUT also for syslinux as a small improvement step.

codefritzel commented at 2023-05-05 09:42:

If you see a big value in setting the boot loader timeout separate from the general user input timeout then I'd love to see a unified variable for that, which is recognised by all our boot methods (ISO with syslinux or with UEFI, PXE, USB, GRUB ...). Having different variables for the same purpose for different boot loaders is not user friendly IMHO.

If you don't want to put in that effort then I'd suggest to simply use the USER_INPUT_TIMEOUT also for syslinux as a small improvement step.

I think it would be better to create a new variable BOOTLOADER_TIMEOUT for this purpose.

pcahyna commented at 2023-05-05 10:07:

If you see a big value in setting the boot loader timeout separate from the general user input timeout then I'd love to see a unified variable for that, which is recognised by all our boot methods (ISO with syslinux or with UEFI, PXE, USB, GRUB ...). Having different variables for the same purpose for different boot loaders is not user friendly IMHO.

@schlomo I really like this suggestion, we have already too many output and bootloader (or both) specific configuration variables (the various ISO or GRUB or BIOS variables, of course some of them are specific, but some are not).

Since the variables are already there, unifying them would be a breaking change and thus a great (IMO) topic for 3.0 ( https://github.com/rear/rear/issues/2941#issuecomment-1521824361 )

jsmeix commented at 2023-05-05 11:36:

@pcahyna @schlomo
feel free to contribute such a general cleanup
of our long grown pile of various kind of
messy recovery system bootloader stuff.
It would be more than very much appreciated!
I cannot do that because I am not at all a bootloader expert.
All I can do is a tiny fix here a tiny fix there limited
to what I can imagine that (hopefully) no regressions happen.

jsmeix commented at 2023-05-08 13:31:

@schlomo
could you approve its current state if it is OK for you
(your change request from 3 days ago is still there)?

I would like to merge it tomorrow afternoon
unless there are other objections.

[Export of Github issue for rear/rear.]