Time to drop win32-loader ?

[Didier 'OdyX' Raboud]

Hello there,
(please CC me on replies, I'm not on these lists)

(live from the d-i/debian-cd BoF)

as some of you likely remember, win32-loader is shipped on d-i and debian-cd
images, and is added in autorun.inf for automated launch on Windows machines,
when USB/CDs are plugged in. What it does is allow a machine booted in Windows
to download a d-i image, put a grub image and d-i in C:/debian-installer, and
fiddle with the (old?) Windows bootloader to allow selection of d-i upon
reboot. It either works from the image, or downloading stuff from internet.

I haven't checked (as I don't have access to Windows machines...), but I'm
quite confident that the Windows Bootloader fiddling is quite unlikely to work
on modern (Secure Boot ?) machines.

That brings two sides of the question:
* should it still be shipped on amd64 netinsts, CD's, other images?
* should it still be offered on the mirrors ?
on https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/
(where it lands via dak's byhand handling upon uploads; but is manually
moved by ftp-master on migrations and release days)

(I orphaned win32-loader back in September, and it still doesn't have an
official maintainer; but I'd be happy to work towards ditching it away :-P)

Best,
OdyX

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Post by Didier 'OdyX' Raboud
Hello there,
(please CC me on replies, I'm not on these lists)
(live from the d-i/debian-cd BoF)
as some of you likely remember, win32-loader is shipped on d-i and debian-cd
images, and is added in autorun.inf for automated launch on Windows machines,
when USB/CDs are plugged in. What it does is allow a machine booted in Windows
to download a d-i image, put a grub image and d-i in C:/debian-installer, and
fiddle with the (old?) Windows bootloader to allow selection of d-i upon
reboot. It either works from the image, or downloading stuff from internet.
I haven't checked (as I don't have access to Windows machines...), but I'm
quite confident that the Windows Bootloader fiddling is quite unlikely to work
on modern (Secure Boot ?) machines.
* should it still be shipped on amd64 netinsts, CD's, other images?
* should it still be offered on the mirrors ?
on https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/
(where it lands via dak's byhand handling upon uploads; but is manually
moved by ftp-master on migrations and release days)
(I orphaned win32-loader back in September, and it still doesn't have an
official maintainer; but I'd be happy to work towards ditching it away :-P)
Best,
OdyX

Also from the Debconf session - we recommend Rufus - lets just do that and
drop win32-loader?

All the very best, as ever,

Andy C.

[Raphael Hertzog]

Hello,

Post by Didier 'OdyX' Raboud
I haven't checked (as I don't have access to Windows machines...), but I'm
quite confident that the Windows Bootloader fiddling is quite unlikely to work
on modern (Secure Boot ?) machines.

I think I had read some report that it was indeed not working... it was in
the context of Kali but there are no specific changes that might justify
that the breakage would be specific to Kali.

It's also one part of the ISO that still contains Debian references
by default and where it's not trivial to replace it (it's embedded in
the executable IIRC).

Post by Didier 'OdyX' Raboud
* should it still be shipped on amd64 netinsts, CD's, other images?
* should it still be offered on the mirrors ?
on https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/
(where it lands via dak's byhand handling upon uploads; but is manually
moved by ftp-master on migrations and release days)

I think it was a cool feature (even though I never used it myself) but if
we don't have the manpower to maintain it properly, we'd better ditch it.

Also with EFI, the setup screens tend to be more graphical and more user
friendly, and the benefit of the "Boot from Windows" feature is more
limited IMO.

Cheers,

[Cyril Brulebois]

Salut OdyX,

Post by Didier 'OdyX' Raboud
* should it still be shipped on amd64 netinsts, CD's, other images?
* should it still be offered on the mirrors ?
on https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/
(where it lands via dak's byhand handling upon uploads; but is manually
moved by ftp-master on migrations and release days)
(I orphaned win32-loader back in September, and it still doesn't have an
official maintainer; but I'd be happy to work towards ditching it away :-P)

As you know, I've been perfectly happy with staying away from having to
know too much about it
 (and I'm sorry to have left it on your shoulders).

While I have no idea about its relevance versus current Windows versions
(I don't have any such systems, and with Secure Boot being supported by
Debian, booting Debian directly shouldn't be a huge issue
), or about
whether it works there, I'll just mention that it's been useful to salvage
at least two computers at my LLUG during the last year:
- one wouldn't boot from anything else than its hard drive (a very buggy
BIOS was suspected, but the machine was 500+ km away);
- one would know how to boot from a CD but nobody had the external CD
drive (and cable!) that would make that work.

That being said, those are only anecdotes, and for such 10+y, 15+y
systems, I wouldn't find it crazy to suggest users to maybe give up on
them, or if they insist, use an installation image or the executable from
a previous Debian release?

(A quick look at http://ftp.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/ suggests
it goes back at least to triple-old stable
 and given the size of each
directory, the cost of keeping some old ones shouldn't be a huge issue.)

On the usability side, salvaging old systems like this isn't quite easy
anyway, as antique browsers (IE we meet again), libraries (TLS 1.3
anyone), certificate truststores (Let's Encrypt who are you), and similar
challenges made it hard to just get to the Debian website, documentation,
and actual download.

TL;DR: No objections either way.


Cheers,

[Steve McIntyre]

Post by Didier 'OdyX' Raboud
Hello there,
(please CC me on replies, I'm not on these lists)
(live from the d-i/debian-cd BoF)
as some of you likely remember, win32-loader is shipped on d-i and debian-cd
images, and is added in autorun.inf for automated launch on Windows machines,
when USB/CDs are plugged in. What it does is allow a machine booted in Windows
to download a d-i image, put a grub image and d-i in C:/debian-installer, and
fiddle with the (old?) Windows bootloader to allow selection of d-i upon
reboot. It either works from the image, or downloading stuff from internet.
I haven't checked (as I don't have access to Windows machines...), but I'm
quite confident that the Windows Bootloader fiddling is quite unlikely to work
on modern (Secure Boot ?) machines.
* should it still be shipped on amd64 netinsts, CD's, other images?
* should it still be offered on the mirrors ?
on https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/
(where it lands via dak's byhand handling upon uploads; but is manually
moved by ftp-master on migrations and release days)
(I orphaned win32-loader back in September, and it still doesn't have an
official maintainer; but I'd be happy to work towards ditching it away :-P)

Let's kill it, agreed. Please file a bug against debian-cd and I'll
remove it from our setup there.