More Timeouts for AutoYaST

Run, Lola, Run!
a famous german movie

Today I want to introduce you some new timeouts you can configure in AutoYaST.
On openSUSE 11,2 you can use timeouts in two new places.

• The feedback popups of your scripts can timeout now if you want


• The ask-dialogs can timeout now too

So even with feedback and ask-questions, you can now have a non-stop installation.
How does it work? Lets start with the feedback dialogs:

<script>
 <source>
<![CDATA[
echo "this feedback will timeout"
]]>
 </source>
 <feedback config:type="boolean">true</feedback>
 <feedback_type>message</feedback_type>
 <debug config:type="boolean">false</debug>
</script>
...
<report>
  <messages>
    <log config:type="boolean">false</log>
    <show config:type="boolean">true</show>
    <timeout config:type="integer">5</timeout>
  </messages>
</report>

This is an ordinary AutoYaST script which makes use of the feedback mechanism and there is nothing special with it except for the new feedback_type. This type can be "message", "warning" or "error" and if you are experienced with AutoYaST, you might notice that these are the same values that you can configure timeouts for in the <report> section.
Your scripts will timeout like you configure it in the report section if you specify a feedback_type for them.
Without that feedback_type, the old behaviour of a blocking popup is used.

On ask dialogs it works a bit different:

<ask>
  <title>Password: root</title>
  <path>users,0,user_password</path>
  <question>Password for root</question>
  <password config:type="boolean">true</password>
  <default>lousypassword</default>
  <timeout config:type="integer">20</timeout>
</ask>

You can configure the timeout in seconds for each dialog and if the user does not answer the dialog in time, it will continue with the assumption that the default value is wanted.
Without that <timeout ...>, the old behaviour of a blocking ask-dialog is used.

Run, AutoYaST, Run!

au revoir, Uwe