Ubuntu Wiki

Summary

This page is for discussion related to Wubi development in the Intrepid cycle.

Release Note

Further improve the user experience when using Wubi.

Kernel Related Changes

• ntfs-3g fsck (VERY IMPORTANT!!!)

• Loopinstallation speed: (http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/1/9/50)

• Loopinstallation robustness (https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/204133),

• Remounting of loopfiles (https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/201750)

• Remounting of ntfs3g (https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/186117)

• Online resizing (in particular squeezing of ntfs partition while it is mounted and even hosting /)
• Hibernation with swap files (double check suspend with fuse filesystem)
• fallocate in ntfs/vfat
• native ntfs installations (last time I checked szaka mentioned it was 2 years away)

Possible New Features

• d-i support (i.e. same hooks as lupin-casper)
• Add bittorrent support to built-in download manager
• Built-in cdburner (need to evaluate CD burning libraries)
• Bootable USB device with ISO with casper-rw
• HD-media like installation from HD (Target empty partitions?).
• Grub2 (as recommended by bean123)
• Better build scripts (nsis is available in the repositories)
• Support for "large" distros such as ubuntu studio or edubuntu (support separate add-on CD directly? or leave it as pos-installation task? shall we automate such tasks somehow?)
• support DVD
• Use resizable image files (LVM or simply 4GB zeroed + nGB sparse, or qcow2 type of images or images that are contiguous for the first 4GB and sparse for nGB)
• Support for "native" installations (installation inside a folder, no loopfile)
• "My Documents" bookmark pointing to the appropriate windows folder (migration-assistant?)
• Add "Use existing ISO" button, to use a pre-downloaded ISO (at the moment ISO and wubi.exe can be placed in the same folder, but it is not too obvious).

UI Changes

• Can we further simplify the interface?
• Changes to the accessibility page
• Do we want to have advanced options?
• Possiblility of a frontend rewrite in python or c++ and such

Porting Wubi to other platforms

• Could use a native installation approach (installation inside a folder, no loopfile)
• lubi (wubi for linux)
• mubi (wubi for mac)

Porting Wubi To Debian

• Requires D-I hooks.

• Requires porting upstream all the changes to initramfs-tools, grub & co, sysvinit scripts, caspre/d-i initrd hooks, lupin-support.

• Investigate the opportuinty of a tighter integration with the win32-loader project (at the moment it does netinstallation only).

Migration Tools (loopinstallation -> real partition)

• To be discussed in separate session:
• Support for loopinstallations within ubiquity (it should detect existing loopinstallations and offer to migrate them)
• Simplified migration GUI.

Migration Page Mockup

Please select where you would like to migrate your Wubi installation to:

• Use free space in /dev/sda (8GB) #must be large enough
• Use free space in /dev/sdb (6GB) #must be large enough
• Use /dev/sda2 (26GB) #must not contain any file and be large enough
• Use /dev/sdb5 (12GB) #must not contain any file and be large enough
• Manual Mode (Advanced)

Free up space:

• Resize an existing partition
• Delete an existing partition

Manual Mode:

• Overwrite an existing disk/partition #skip disk/partitions where wubi is installed
• Create multiple mountpoints

Brainstorm

[http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=Wubi&ordering=mostvotes Wubi in brainstorm]

Outstanding Issues for 8.04.1

Most have already fixes committed, but need to be tested, approved and released.

• Bug #217348 Incorrect disk order detection generates wrong menu.lst
• Bug #222690 install failed during "import document and setting" at 88% - French windows XP
• Bug #224311 grub4dos gets jammed with the message "Turning On Gate A20"
• Bug #204128 After install completed bar wasn't all green and installer hung
• Bug #136682 File with non-C/special characters in host computer disappear
• Bug #226622 Wubi has unclear error message on NTFS dirty flag
• Bug #224697 Disable hibernation if swap is on file
• Bug #223250 Country detection is wrong when country name is localized in the registry
• Bug #217593 If the installer fails or is aborted, users can end up in Live CD Desktop, which is confusing
• Bug #207137 Wubi fails to install from my cd-rw but does from my dvd-rw
• Bug #230703 Casper only scans vfat filesystems for cow files
• Bug #230716 Allow casper to use a squashfs filesystem within an arbitrary path

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec