How to capture FreeBSD installation Screen - for review purpose

[Randy Pratt]

On Tue, 6 May 2003 00:28:44 -0700, Murray Stokely wrote:
> On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 12:51:21PM -0500, Eric Anderson wrote:
> > >That's not how the screen shots in the Handbook were generated.  Look at
> > >the vidcontrol(1) man page, and the -p and -P options.  Then look at
> > >ports/graphics/scr2png and ports/textproc/scr2txt.
> >
> > Is vidcontrol available during install?

> Hmm.  I don't think so, but sysinstall tries to invoke it anyway in
> mouse.c?  If it was truly required then you could build a custom boot
> floppy with it.

> You can run a fake installation with sysinstall on an existing system
> (for example, to populate a chroot directory hierarchy with release
> bits).  I suspect that is how Randy Pratt and others have generated
> the release snapshots using the tools that Nik described (and wrote --
> thanks Nik!)

That sounds like a more direct approach to get screenshots.  Actually,
I took a different route and used a combination of methods to get the
screenshots since vidcontrol isn't available during install.

I used a headless install over a null modem cable to creat screenshots 
prior to the Main Installation screen.  This is described in the 
Handbook section "2.12.1 Installing FreeBSD on a System without a 
Monitor or Keyboard".  I used vidcontrol on the running FreeBSD 
system to do the captures.  This worked fine for the text screens but 
colors were not displayed properly on the serial console.

The balance of the screenshots were made post-install by starting 
sysinstall and using vidcontrol to capture the console screen.

There are some screens that are different after installation than 
during the installation.  I used a hex editor (ports/editors/hexedit)
to modify the screens to reflect the correct install screen content.
I used two computers: one to do the install and another to create
and/or verify screenshot content as I do installations. Its not too 
difficult to learn to edit the .scr screenshots with a little 
patience.

Of course, this is more of a brute force approach and requires much
more attention to detail but far less than the old html/tables 
approach I was using before Nik created the capture tools.

Randy