Lack of feedback while configuring packages

[John Nilsson]

In the initial install when installing packages packages take a long time
(>250ms) to install. The interface should provide som progess indicator of each
package installation and configuration.

I noticed this when the installation said it was "Configuring bicyclerepairman".
I had to switch vt's to ensure that the computer wasn't hung.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

I don't consider 250ms to be too long to wait without progress indication.

[John Nilsson (john-milsson)]

Ok, granted the 250ms figure is about feedback after pressing a button or
othewise initiating an operation. But I do belive that there are some limit. As
I said, in this case I had to check...

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

apt doesn't give tasksel information at any finer granularity than what's already displayed (and, come to that, nor does dpkg give apt anything better). It's not clear to me how you could do a lot better in any vaguely generic way if it's a postinst running something that takes a while. To be honest, I think the best long-term fix is to make packages install more quickly ... dpkg triggers would help with that.

[John Nilsson (john-milsson)]

Wow, old bug.

I think one way to go about this it to show a system monitor at install (graphical boot could do with one too). You know the kind that is at the top of bootchart images.

[Andrew Pollock (apollock)]

So I'm not sure if I'm hitting this bug or another one, but I just installed beta 1, hit enter instead of space on the Ubuntu Desktop task in tasksel, rebooted, reran tasksel, selected Ubuntu Desktop, and then hit enter. I hit enter a few more times due to the lack of feedback, then switched VTs, to discover that there was an apt-get -q -y -f install xserver-xorg running.

I wandered off and came back later and there was a progress bar for the downloading displayed, so I'm unsure how long that took to appear.

This was on a Thinkpad T43p