BSDInstall ISO images

Nathan Whitehorn nwhitehorn at freebsd.org
Sun Jan 9 05:38:16 UTC 2011


On 01/08/11 20:18, Michael Ross wrote:
> Am 08.01.2011, 23:54 Uhr, schrieb Nathan Whitehorn
> <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org>:
>
>> I've spent some time integrating bsdinstall into startup of install
>> CDs, mostly related to building useful live-CD-based installers. An
>> i386 image can be found here (other architectures may follow, as my
>> very slow DSL line permits):
>>
>> http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/bsdinstall-i386-20110108.iso.bz2
>>
>> The source for this can be found at:
>>
>> svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/nwhitehorn/bsdinstall
>>
>> The bits related to live CD usage are the testsystem.sh and rc.local
>> files. Instead of running sysinstall as an init replacement, I have
>> written a small rc.local script that gives the user the option to
>> either start the installer, open a single-user-mode style shell, or to
>> continue to boot to a multi-user live CD. Also, instead of the md root
>> used by sysinstall, this just boots from the CD directly. This
>> prevents the need for sysinstall's media selection, since the
>> distribution files are in the mounted root file system.
>>
>> I would appreciate any comments or test results.
>> -Nathan
>
> Some quick results from toying around, mainly in the partition editor:
>
> - I can't delete slices. Ever. "Device busy"
>
> - I can't delete partitions ("Device busy") once they have been
> accessed, e.g. after interrupting the installation process ("Finished"
> Ctrl-C "Restart")

Right, you can't delete currently mounted partitions, and partedit isn't 
smart enough to unmount them first. I hadn't thought about this problem 
-- thanks for the report.

> - Sometimes "Finished" shows the "You have cancelled... Restart?"-Dialog
> right away. Not sure how to reproduce.

That should very much never happen, unless you press "Don't save". I'd 
love to know how you got this to happen, if you manage to reproduce it 
in the future.

> - "Add Partition"-Dialog:
> Having to change between Tab- and Cursor-Keys to navigate this dialog
> confuses me. I keep pressing Tab to go to the next field.
> Shift-Tab closes the dialog entirely instead of navigating backwards.
> "Label" has to be left blank, else "Invalid value". (plus, the
> errormessage could indicate which of the values is invalid)

The Tab issue is a just a difference between the new dialog this uses 
and the current system dialog. I'll see if it's possible to change.

The label thing is trickier. The "Invalid value" comes out of the kernel 
when trying to set a label on a partition scheme that does not support 
them, and the kernel does not provide useful information on the problem 
(e.g. which field was invalid). The partition editor has to have 
intimate knowledge of the partition schemes to fix this.

> - Adding additional users:
> Crtl-C here cancels the whole installation process? After reboot:
> First try: No mountroot, but system boots after specifying manually.
> Second try (after installation from scratch): No mountroot, no
> /etc/fstab on disk.

Most of the steps are set to cancel the whole process if you Cntrl-C. 
That should probably not be the case as soon as it has finished 
unpacking the system. Can you provide details on how you configured your 
system that resulted in no /etc/fstab? Did you see the "Installation 
Complete" dialog?

Thank you very much for testing this!
-Nathan


More information about the freebsd-arch mailing list