Removal of sysinstall from HEAD and lack of a post-install configuration tool

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Nathan Whitehorn
<nwhitehorn at freebsd.org>wrote:

> On 12/29/11 06:52, John Baldwin wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday, December 27, 2011 9:32:52 pm Lawrence Stewart wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/28/11 06:29, Doug Barton wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/27/2011 03:48, Lawrence Stewart wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On the topic of Doug's actual question, I see minimal sense in
>>>>> resurrecting sysinstall in head now. I would suggest it be done much
>>>>> closer to (say, 6 months before) the 10.0 release cycle, if no suitable
>>>>> post-installation configuration tool has materialised.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My concern about that approach is that 9.0 hasn't even been released yet
>>>> and we've already seen changes that are going to make it hard to
>>>> resurrect sysinstall if that's the decision we come to. Waiting another
>>>> year or 2 would make it impossible.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Which changes are you referring to? I would have thought a reverse merge
>>> to undo the deletion of the sysinstall and old libdialog sources would
>>> be very minimal work. We'd also probably need a few extra build system
>>> changes to make sure old libdialog is perhaps statically compiled into
>>> sysinstall as it would be the only in-tree consumer, but that's not hard
>>> either. I may be lacking some imagination, but don't really see why it
>>> would become harder the longer we wait.
>>>
>>
>> I think Doug is worried that the list will just get longer, and I agree.
>> Bits rot faster once they aren't part of the build.  It is easy to delete
>> sysinstall or trim it, it is not easy to resurrect it.  Personally, the
>> one
>> time I used bsdinstall recently I found it to be a bit uneven, and not
>> really
>> a step forward for a new user compared to the "standard" install mode of
>> sysinstall.  It's biggest win is it's ability to do more disk
>> configurations,
>> but it seemed less user-friendly in almost every other regard (and even
>> the
>> disk editor seemd less user-friendly even if it had more functionality).
>>
>>
> I'd appreciate any specific comments you might have, and especially
> specific suggestions for improvements. Except from people who are old hands
> at sysinstall, I've received almost universally positive comments on the
> user experience. Patches would be even more appreciated, since real life
> has intervened to steal most of my FreeBSD time.
> -Nathan
>




I have installed FreeBSD 9.0 release candidates by using bsdinstall .

I have selected only guided hard disk setup by selecting all defaults .

For a less experienced person , by selecting the only defaults , and giving
root password , a single user definition is sufficient to a successful
install .

With this structure of bsdinstall , I think , it is very well designed and
expertly implemented .

My suggestion would be , for immediate adjustment , after selecting
"REBOOT" ,
since installer may know that install is from CD/DVD , may unmount CD/DVD ,
warn the user
to remove CD/DVD , and request "press a key to continue" for booting .

Since this part is missing , it is becoming necessary to enter a race
between the user and the computer to find an interval to eject CD/DVD
before captured by the BIOS .

I did not use USB for install . I do not know how it is handled , but
unmounting and extracting the USB stick and pressing a key to continue is
also will be useful , if it is not already like that .


Thank you very much .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk