Sysinstall

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 19:23:20 -0500, "Grant Peel" <gpeel at thenetnow.com> wrote:
> Cool to see the thread take this twist, but the original question still 
> remains:
> 
> How doe one install FreeBSD without the sysinstal utility?

In principle, you just start a kind of minimal live file system,
use its commands (like fdisk, bsdlabel, newfs, then tar etc.)
to install the system from the CD or DVD (or the Internet).
Neccessary changes to files (like /etc/rc.conf) would have to
be done manually (read: you would have to write it by yourself).
Not that it wasn't impossible.

If I remember correctly, the last time I tried OpenBSD it had
a "guided installer" similar to this. No ncurses based dialog
driven installer.

I don't know how fast the sysinstall utility will disappear,
but I would miss it. Personally, a "next, next, next, next,
next, next" GUI based installer wouldn't be applealing to me,
requiring me to be present during the installation, hah! :-)
After a while, you can be really fast with sysinstall, and
especially in the early stage of installation its very helpful.
I don't use it to install software afterwards.

In any case, it would be great to have the choice to still use
sysinstall if the new installer is worse. But hey, this is
FreeBSD, and up to this point, I haven't seen anything that
would be crap from the OS team. (Crap only in ports.) :-)
So I would definitely give any new sysinstaller a chance.



-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...