BSDInstall: I want the bikeshed painted plaid

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk m.e.sanliturk at gmail.com
Mon Jan 3 17:02:00 UTC 2011


On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 10:54 PM, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org>wrote:

> On 01/02/11 12:49, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
>
>> As those of you who obsessively follow the SVN commit mails may have
>> noticed, I recently began work on a new installer, which I have
>> tentatively named 'bsdinstall'. You can find the code itself at
>> svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/nwhitehorn/bsdinstall and a wiki page
>> describing it at http://wiki.freebsd.org/BSDInstall.
>>
>>
>

Personally I am installing many Linux and BSD operating systems to learn
their features as much as possible and to utilize some of them for software
development and a base for my  developed applications .

Up to now I could NOT be able to advance very much .

In my daily operations , use of Mandriva Linux come out the best , and
continuously I am using it .

The main distinguishing differences for me are the following :

- For the ordinary user ( not the root or as super user ) :

  - When a USB stick or external hard disk is attached , automatic mounting
and usability of it ( read  ,  write ) at  least FAT or NTFS formatted ones
( Mandriva Linux requires other ones to be root mounted , as default ) .
 - Auto mount of CD or DVD ( especially ones containing data ) .
 - Usability of USB attached devices such as web camera .
 - Burning CD or DVD without interfering super user or root privileges .
 - Allowance of root login in GUI mode at the start up without entry from
ordinary user mode into root mode . ( Debian Linux has such an option which
asks to root whether root logins will be possible or not in GUI mode .
Mandriva Linux has safe mode login with ability using KDE/GNOME ( the
installed one ) by startx  command , or choice from menu as Console login ,
and then issuing startx ) .


All of the above features are available in Mandriva Linux , and Fedora or
Debian Linux ( I did not burn CD or DVD in Fedora or Debian Linux ) .


In FreeBSD , after an install , by following a pile of flash cards , it is
necessary to enter some of the above features one by one . Up to now I could
NOT be able to achieve burning of CD/DVD , auto mount CD/DVD or USB sticks ,
even I did NOT try to attach external HDD .

I am using PC-BSD . It is allowing DVD burning with K3b version 1.0.5 , but
very slowly
which may be considered unusable . After burning 9 more DVDs , I will erase
PC-BSD because I could NOT be able to manage its KDE wall paper which
changing it itself , but it is irritating me very much . ( There is NO root
login , automounts USB sticks , but not NTFS external HDD ) .



Among the BSD operating systems , the best is FreeBSD , with the above
missing parts ( at least for me . I can not work with it easily , this may
mean that other people will have much more difficulty than me ( I have a PhD
in Computer Engineering , and my life is passing in front of the personal
computers .) .


Another most important problem is hard disk partitioning .

In Mandriva Linux , there are two main partitions :
  sda1 for operating system ( / )
  sda6 for /home .

During install , if there is an installed system which will be replaced :

 Check - Install ( upgrade is also available , Install fully installs from
scratch )
            - Use current partitions

It is asking mount points :
Give sda1 as /
        sda6 as /home .

It is formatting ONLY and ONLY sda1 , but NOT sda6 ( /home ) .
The only loss is user names .

During user definitions , IF the SAME USER NAMES are given , all of the data
are again
belong to their original users without any loss .

In that way , I am able to install any new Mandriva Linux version easily .
Even when older installed structure is ext3 , but new version is ext4 , it
is installing ext3 for the older
available structure . I have noticed this after installing all of the
operating system on a new disk . Its file system was ext4 , the other one
ext3 ( installed on older version ) .


My conclusion is that , the hard disk layout structure of FreeBSD , really
needs a new design .

I am so desperate about such installs that , I am thinking to write a new
install program
with respect to my experiences . My difficulty is I am not using C and not
fluent as much as to write a competent install program .

My ideas about partitions are as follows :

Partition 1 : Operating System .
             2 : Packages / Ports used globally
             3 : User definitions ( names , privileges , passwords , etc )
             4 : /home : User data directories
                 ( each user will have a jailed environment , means he/she
will be able to
                 pkg_add into HIS/HER environment . The root will add them
for global use )

             5. ... others .

With one important feature :

Partitions 2 , 3  , 4 should be assignable to either a single disk ( with
the 1 : Operating system partition ) or MULTIPLE , DIFFERENT disks :

In that way default home will be /home , additional home directories in
different disk units , for example /homeA , /homeB , ...

Therefore , during user definitions , it should be possible to specify
his/her home explicitly when there are multiple home directories .

With the above layout , it will be possible to install  operating system
ONLY into its own partition without touching to other partitions when it is
decided to upgrade a system in that way .


Installing the operating system in the following way , may allow
experimenting and using different versions on the same system :

/FreeBSD
/FreeBSD/8.2/
/FreeBSD/8.3/
/FreeBSD/9.0/

etc. , each one in its own directory with the usual subdirectories .

For the packages , require that each package installs into
... /package_name/version/
which will allow installation of different versions in the same partition (
some of the packages are using this structure , but not all of the ) .  This
is important for different operating system versions .


When an  additional Operating system is installed , it will FORMAT its own
directories ,
IF there are EXISTING other versions , with some other necessary options ,
such Format ALL of them .

Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk


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