ISO Images/Releases/FTP Servers

[Kevin Monceaux]

FreeBSD Fans,

I'm experiencing irritation.  Would someone have a long talk with whoever 
is responsible for the ISO images, release names, and/or the FTP servers, 
depending on where the root if this irritation lies?

<rant>

I've installed FreeBSD briefly a couple of times on my home desktop box. 
Recently I've been taking an install on vmware from the 7.1-BETA2 ISO, 
bootonly - installed via FTP, for a spin to jog my memory a bit in 
preparation to perform another install.  All worked well under vmware.  I 
didn't try zfs as I figured I'd just wait for the real install for that. 
After getting home from work today I started the install process.  This is 
roughly how it went.

I booted the 7.1-BETA2 ISO and wiped out my Gentoo installation.  I 
sliced/partitioned my hard drives.  I then fired up a fixit shell to go 
through the root on UFS plus everything else on ZFS procedures I had used 
the last time around.  I tried to load zfs.ko and kldload said it didn't 
exist.  ls verified that it did indeed exist, but kldload refused to load 
it.  At this point I had wiped out the Gentoo install on the only 
functional PC I have in the house.  Well, there's a Pentium MMX 200Mhz box 
in the closet with an ooooooooold Mandrake install on it but it's power 
supply fan tries to be difficult most of the time.

After grumbling for a few moments I pulled out a 7.0-STABLE-200807 livefs 
CD I had and tried using it for the fixit shell.  It complained about the 
versions not matching, but started the fixit shell and I was able to load 
zfs.ko and create my zfs pool and filesystems.  I try to start the 
install, pick a ZFS server and it complains that it can't find release 
7.1-BETA2 on the FTP server.  I went blank on release naming schemes.  I 
tried several things to no avail.  So, I finally decide to start over and 
install from the 7.0-STABLE-200807 ISO I have handy.  I get to the same 
point and it complains that it can't find release 7.0-STABLE-200807 on the 
FTP server.  Fortunately after a few tries I was able to do a better job 
of jogging my poor memory and made the installer happy using 7.0-RELEASE 
as the release name.  Would someone please:

A.  Keep the releases available on the FTP servers for a reasonable amount
     of time.

and/or

B.  Add functionality to the installer to list the available releases if
     it can't find the release it's looking for.


</rant>


Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!