Request for review/testing: switching the default installer

[Nathan Whitehorn]

On 03/07/11 14:14, Freddie Cash wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 6:49 AM, Nathan Whitehorn
> <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org>  wrote:
>> BSDinstall has acquired at this point its final form (prior to a future
>> merge with pc-sysinstall), and I believe is ready to replace sysinstall on
>> the 9.0 snapshot ISOs. Barring any objections, I would like to pull this
>> switch 2 weeks from today, on the 14th of March.
> <snip>
>> Bug reports would be very appreciated at this time. There are three known
>> bugs currently, which will be fixed soon, so please don't report these:
>> error reporting is not graceful if there are no writable disks in the
>> system, you must select at least one optional component, and the doc build
>> is not currently connected to the releases.
> <snip>
>
> After much finnaggling and gnashing of teeth around hardware (not
> related to installer), I have managed to get a bootable 9-CURRENT
> image with BSDInstall, and used it to get a bootable install of
> FreeBSD 9-CURRENT.  :)

Thanks for testing, and sympathies for the hardware trouble!
> Here are my thought and experiences using the new installer.
>
> Things I really like:
>    - that the install CD is a LiveCD with a fully functional system;
> while it won't replace a Frenzy CD, it's very close
>    - very streamlined install without a lot of extra "fluff" that just
> gets skipped anyway (like everything underneath Standard in the first
> sysinstall screen)
>    - the ability to use features like GPT, gmirror, zfs right from the get-go
>    - the ability to drop to a fully functional shell at various stages
> of the install, with access to proper man pages
>
> Things that irritated me:
>    - when you drop to a shell from the disk editor screen, it lists the
> instructions at the top, but then never repeats them ever again

Can you suggest a better way to do this? In other words, when and in 
what circumstances would you want to see them again?

>    - if you get lost in the disk editor shell and type "exit" to get
> back to the disk editor ... it thinks you are finished partitioning
> and carries on with the install, which then errors out due to no
> writable filesystems, requiring you to restart the entire process

This is bad. I can modify it to check if a filesystem has been mounted 
at /mnt, and maybe if the fstab file exists and restart the disk editor 
menu if they have not.

>    - the disk editor is very limited, especially in its error handling;
> I found myself stuck in a loop trying to exit the screen without a /
> filesystem listed, but I was doing everything from the shell

That's a clear bug. It should probably only validate the setup if 'Save' 
is selected. The issue of whether it should allow you to save without 
defining a / partition when invoked from a shell is a more complicated 
one, and one I'll have to think about (suggestions welcome).

>    - screen flips between a nice blue background (the curses
> interface?) and a black background (running shell commands?) which is
> quite jarring and slightly confusing;
>    - screen elements go from nicely centred (curses interface?) and
> then jump to the top-left corner of the screen (shell commands?) which
> is also quite jarring and slightly confusing

Yes, this should be prettified. It's running a few things (passwd, 
adduser) in a chroot, and I figured getting things working there was 
more important than making them pretty for now.

> The last two may be limitations in the curses setup?  But it would be
> nice if "shell command" I/O could be centred like the rest, and if the
> background could remain a single colour.  Not huge issues, just things
> that irritated me.  :)
>
> Overall, I am quite impressed with the new installer, as it is *just*
> an installer and not a system configuration creator (or breaker) like
> sysinstall.
>
> Now that I understand the "new world order" of GPT-based partitioning
> and booting, I think I'm going to like FreeBSD 9.0 a heck of a lot.
>
> ... off to play with dedupe and other ZFSv28 goodies ...

Thanks!
-Nathan