Horrible installer (was: Re: FreeBSD 9)

[Devin Teske]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
> questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Wojciech Puchar
> Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 10:25 AM
> To: Damien Fleuriot
> Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Horrible installer (was: Re: FreeBSD 9)
> 
> >> Allan
> _______________________________________________
> >
> >
> > Erm, you have to realize the new installer was discussed at length here,
> > when 9.0 was still under development/beta/prerelease.
> >
> >
> > Alternatively, you could do like me and install entirely by hand:
> >
> > - boot an MFSBSD image (thanks mm@ )
> > - partition your disks from there (see http://my.gd/bsd.htm for a rough
> > sketch on how to use gpart)
> > - fetch the 9.0 archives in .txz (tar.xz) format
> > - unpack archives with xz -d
> > - untar archived to the mountpoint with your new filesystems (eg: tar xf
> > base.tar -C /mnt)
> > - customize configuration files (rc.conf, fstab, root's password or SSH
> > key, sshd_config to allow root login temporarily)
> 
> and almost like me installing previous release (FreeBSD 8) everywhere.
> 
> i just made once bootable pendrive with system, lots of tools and
> whole system as .tar.gz files (made my own compiling from cvs)
> 
> actually i add
> WITHOUT_SYSINSTALL=yes
> 
> to make.conf so i don't build it at all.
> 
> And IMHO sysinstall should not exist, while good documentation about
> installing BY HAND should be there.
> 
> Someone that cannot install it him/herself will not be able to ever manage
> it after so why waste time.
> 

Disagree.

For example, field engineers which may not be expected to know how to manage
FreeBSD _ARE_ expected to know how to install it. A manual install process is
more prone to errors than one that is guided by something/anything.


> Do not forget that FreeBSD is for unix users,

Not all "users" are people. A corporation can be considered a "unix user" which
changes the perspective quite a bit.

> contrary to linux which is
> for windoze haters.
> 
> 
> Again i propose removing sysinstall altogether.
>

And you'll have your wish... over time! The community has agreed to phase out
sysinstall(8) gradually over the next 2 or three releases (producing either a
10.0 or 11.0 that is free of sysinstall depending on how things progress with
respect to replacement utilities such as bsdinstall and the proposed bsdconfig).
-- 
Devin

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