SDB:Making installation screenshots

The ability to make screenshots with YaST during installation is little known. This is very useful, for example if writing a guide on how to install openSUSE. Normally installation screenshots are easily available on the net - but often only in English - this way you can have installation screenshots in your own language for any purpose you desire.

Short version

Press the Print Screen button and save the file anywhere. Be aware that some directories, like /tmp, can be emptied or removed.

Long version

It's really easy – all you have to do is the following.

Mount filesystem

You need access to some kind of filesystem to be able to save the screenshots - if you plan to format your entire harddisk during installation it's not recommended to use this filesystem of course. This example uses a floppy disk, you can use any filesystem however, i.e. usb-key, harddisk partition that will not be overwritten or others.

When the YaST graphical installer starts, press Ctrl + Alt + F2 - this will provide you with a root terminal.
Enter the following command:

mount /dev/fdX /media/

This will mount the floppy disk to /media/.

Note: You need to replace /dev/fdX to match the filesystem you want to mount

Press Ctrl + Alt + F7 to return to the graphical installer.

Note:Most of our flash disks are formated by Microsoft's NTFS or FAT partition format instead of Linux partition formats, so the mount command you may use in reality is: mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/fdX /media/ (NTFS) or mount -t vfat /dev/fdX /media/ (FAT32); and the mount point isn't /dev/fdX either(floopy disk is 1990s). Here's the simple Linux rule: floopy is prefixed by fd*;CD/DVD-ROM is prefixed by sr*, so if you use a writable CD it'll be sr0(not possible unless you install using USB, or sr0 will be your openSUSE DVD!);Harddisk is prefixed by sd*, so your local partition wanna use might be sda2 and your flash disk might be sdb. you can check it out using "fdisk -l" command, then judge by size, or mount them one by one, "cd" into them, judge by checking files inside using "ls" command.

Make the screenshots

Now all you have to do is press Print Screen.
A file dialog will appear asking you where to save the screenshot - save it to the location where you mounted the filesystem - in this case /media/

You will have to navigate to that location (in this case /media/) for each screenshot and only the active window is captured.

During the Package Installation part of installation you're only allowed to make screenshots if certain objects are in focus - hit Tab and Print Screen alternately a couple of times and you should be all right.

The screenshots are saved in PNG format.

Unmount the filesystem

When you're done taking screenshots or before ending the installation you should unmount the filesystem to ensure all data is actually written to the filesystem.

Hit Ctrl+ Alt+ F2 to go to the virtual terminal. Enter the following command:

umount /media/

If you use any other mount point, you should replace /media/ with it

Notice that you cannot unmount the directory you're currently located in - so if you're in /media/ use the command cd to navigate to some other location before unmounting.

Screenshots in text mode

This is currently not possible. If you really need them you can do the following

For installations, use a Virtual Machine
For normal YaST, run it in a X based terminal and take screenshots of that