Fresh install on gmirror'ed disks?

[John Hawkes-Reed]

On Friday 03 March 2006 03:01, Mike Jakubik wrote:
> JoaoBR wrote:
> > On Thursday 02 March 2006 22:59, Mike Jakubik wrote:
> >> Thats what i figured. Its sad that the fbsd installer is so behind the
> >> linux ones, in terms of setting up raid and lvm during install.
> >
> > I'm sorry that such things make you sad but do you mind to explain why
> > this is "behind" ?
>
> Because most Linux distributions have had this feature for a while now.
> It's no secret that our installer blows. It gets the job done for a
> basic install, provided you know its quirks, and thats it.

Hm. I don't believe that's true. In the last couple of months, I've had 
occasion to attempt installation of Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo and FreeBSD the 
same box. (And HP-UX and Solaris on different ones slightly less recently)

Gentoo was dreadful. Dumping a user at a command prompt may appeal to the 
geek-machismo types, but not I think to anyone who has to work for a living. 
CDROM -> trash.

Ubuntu uses/used the Debian installer.

Debian I've got used to. (In that it's filled with gotchas, so it takes a 
couple of false starts to get a useful system.)

Yes, it's got alleged RAID and LVM options in the disk-setup menus. However, 
I've never been able to make them work. I'd rather things were absent from an 
installer, rather than there being tantalising options that raise false hope.

From what I remember, the Solaris installer is fairly pretty and works well, 
while the HP example is somewhat messy. The mirroring instructions for both 
those OSes assumed you'd a working system first.

Mind, a GEOM-aware installer is an attactive WIBNI...

I'm also not sure that the onward march of disk-size is strictly relevant. 
Were I building a PC-based RAID, I'd make sure I bought an 
appropriately-sized spare disk at the same time as the rest of the set.

-- 
JH-R