Modern FreeBSD Installer?

[Erik Trulsson]

On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 05:45:49PM -0600, Tim Judd wrote:
> Reading the second half of these mailings got me thinking.  Thinking of ways
> to detect what CAN be done, and what CAN'T -- based entirely on the hardware
> at boot.  I think that we might come to a middle ground to get something
> working.  Here's my thought process right now, with hopefully ample samples
> to example my angle (that was fun to say).
> 
> 
> It's based on two principles.  First is the CPU class.  If it's a 486 or
> 586, run a pure dialog(3) interface.  If it's a slow 686 (and the fudge
> factor to define slow is based on Xorg's *recommended* CPU specs + the
> software installation CPU/RAM needs), run the dialog(3) interface.  If it's
> a fast 686, default to a X environment.

As long as you have sufficient RAM (and you don't actually need all that
much of it) running X on an older CPU should not be much of a problem.
(Unless X.org has bloated really badly over the last couple of years.)



> 
> Second (which ties into the first) is the hardware that was probed during
> boot-time.  If a /dev entry (or even some sysctl) exists for a pci/agp/pci-e
> device, it can run a graphical installer.  If it finds none of the graphical
> adapters, and sees serial ports, enable the dialog(3) as well.  I feel like
> some pseudo-code might help paint the picture more.
> 
> 
> text-mode_install = graphic-mode_install = false
> if (CPUCLASS<=586 || CPUSPEED<=(Xorg-suggested-minimums+install
> requirements)) {
>   set text-mode_install true
> } else {
>   set graphic-mode_install true
> }
> if (found(VGA-graphics) && graphic-mode_install) {
>   exec xinstall
> } else {
>   # enable console installer
>   exec sysinstall
> }
> 
> 
> 
> I seem to find this very logical and can't (yet) see any flaws with doing
> this.  sysinstall is built, we'd just need to maintain it and create the
> x-based installer.  Run it with a minimalist (twm?) startup so we don't
> waste time booting.


That logic will often do the wrong thing for servers.  They are the most
common case where people want to install using a serial console, but
typically do have a (fairly simple) graphical adapter and could run a
graphical installer perfectly well.  That does not necessarily mean
that the person doing the install wants to do it. 

Better would be to check (somehow) for the presence of a keyboard and a
screen.  If those are not present forget about X.  If they are present
then the user at least has a possibility of using X.



Also keep in mind that there are graphical adapters/screen combinations
where X will not work correctly without first tweaking configuration files.
Things have improved greatly here in recent years, but it is still
not perfect.
Text mode is still a good deal more compatible with all kinds of weird
hardware.



> 
> I've also thought about the concept of a web-ui installer, even if it's run
> from the local machine.  The benefit of a webui installer is that you can
> give the disk to someone, tell them to put it up on a publically available
> IP address and just sit back and let it run.  but I ramble on....
> 
> 
> 
> And also brainstorming now has brought me another idea about installing base
> with the concerns Jordan Hubbard wrote in 2000 mentioned in this thread.
> Again based on the hardware probed (this one being the amount of RAM in the
> box, in contrast to the amount of disk space needed to install on disk),
> create a in-ram disk as the staging area when you write to disk.  The other
> idea is to use dump/restore instead of tar files.
> 
> It is possible to have a 3GHz machine with 256MB ram as a valid combination,
> but when bin distribution is about 128MB in size, and kernel distribution is
> 128MB in size, and blindly running an X install -- not wise.
> 
> 
> 
> Last idea is to do similar to what Ubuntu (used to) do.  Provide a X-based
> installer CD and a console-based installer CD.
> 
> 
> I'd be happy to provide feedback; these were brainstorming ideas and would
> really like to see progress move toward a more eye-candy installer.

I fail to see what the point of an X-based install would be - other than
pure eye-candy, which does not seem very important for something like an
installer which is used so rarely.


-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se