Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-bugs (7829 mails)

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http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=539208


           Summary: YaST error handling is cumbersome
    Classification: openSUSE
           Product: openSUSE 11.2
           Version: Milestone 7
          Platform: i686
        OS/Version: SuSE Other
            Status: NEW
          Severity: Minor
          Priority: P5 - None
         Component: Installation
        AssignedTo: bnc-team-screening@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
        ReportedBy: radomir.cernoch@xxxxxxxxx
         QAContact: jsrain@xxxxxxxxxx
          Found By: ---


User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2)
Gecko/20090730 SUSE/3.5.2-3.4 Firefox/3.5.2

If there is a problem with package downloads during installation (openSUSE 11.2
Milestone 7), the error handling is extremely cumbersume and unintuitive. To
see what happens, see the long chain of error dialogs, which showes up:

1) = Error =
   Download fails:
     Failed to download [path] from [url]
   History:
     - [AbstractCommand.cc] URI=[the same url]
   [[OK]]

Here I wonder why the user must know the name of the source file, where the
error (or exception?) was thrown (or caught?). It is such an important
information?

Since the only button is "OK", the user must click "OK".

2) Cannot access installation media
   [the same url, for the 3rd time]
   Check whether the server is accessible.
   Remaining time to automatic retry: 00:30
   [[Retry]] [[Abort]] [[Skip]]

"Retry" button starts the download again, but it is the only button which does
what it says. "Abort" and "Skip" surprisingly do the same thing, but it is
neither abort nor skip. Both buttons pass you to the dialog 3.

3) Cannot create a repository
   from URL '[the same url, for the 4th time]'
   Details:
     no valid metadata found at given URL.
   History:
    - Failed to download [path] from [url, 5th time]
    - Can't provide [path]: Failed to download
      [path] from [url, 6th time]
   Do you want to retry?
   [[Yes]] [[No]]

Here I started to wonder whether it is really necessary to show the URL 6
times.

The buttons here have even more confusing meaning than before:
If I want to change the url, the logical choice is "No" (because the dialog
asks for a "retry"). However the "No" button means "abort" here and it cancels
the whole installation. The "Yes" button does not mean "retry" here (as it may
seem from the dialog), but "modify URL". It brings you to dialog number 4.

4) Is the final dialog, which the user probably wants to achieve. It allows
altering the SMB/HTTP/HTTPS/FTP server, path, username etc. Fortunatelly this
one works fine and it does what it says.

========================================

My proposal here is to keep dialog 4) and to squeeze dialogs 1)+2)+3) into a
single one. It would look something like:

  = Error =
  Cannot initialise repository with software packages.
  Failed to download [path] from [url]
  [[Retry download]]
  [[Modify URL]] 
  [[Abort installation]]
  [[Skip repository]]

where the last button ("Skip repository") would be displayed only if there is
at least one more repository to be initialised. Otherwise it would be hidden
not to confuse the user.

Reproducible: Always

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