SU+J on 9.1-RC2 ISO

[Jeremy Chadwick]

(Please keep me CC'd, as I'm not subscribed to -stable)

I've CC'd Nathan Whitehorn, who according to bsdinstall(8) is the
author (not sure if maintainer) of the code.

This default has already begun to bite users/SAs in the ass:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2012-November/246069.html

SU+J (the journalling part specifically) needs to be disabled by default
in the installer.  This default was a very bad choice and should not
have been done.  It either indicates someone was out of touch with the
rest of the issues surrounding the feature, or that someone
intentionally decided "it's the best way to get people using it for
testing" (I have seen this justification presented in the past, and it
is the wrong approach).

However, since some people DO want it (and those folks don't use dump),
the installer should be modified to make SU+J support toggleable via a a
checkbox.  The default, obviously, should be unchecked.

If the user checks the checkbox, an ominous warning message should be
displayed informing the user of the repercussions.  The only option at
that point should be "OK", after which the checkbox is checked.

Do not tell me "send patches".  This issue/problem has gone on long
enough, and the community bitched hard/long enough, that the person who
committed this default should be responsible for fixing it.

We should operate under the assumption that this bug/problem will never
be fixed.  It probably will be, but again, we must operate with the
assumption that Kirk et al will require years to fix it.  (It has
already been something like 9 months.  Or is it a year?)

While I'm here -- does anyone remember the exact commit which was done
sometime in the past 6-9 months which "made the installer work properly
with SSDs" (re: partition alignment)?  I have questions about that; if I
remember right, someone set the alignment size to 4KBytes, and that is
completely 100% wrong -- it needs to be 1MByte or 2MBytes if you want to
be extra cautious, which correlates with NAND erase block size,
otherwise we're not really solving jack squat.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at koitsu.org |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                http://jdc.koitsu.org/ |
| Mountain View, CA, US                                            |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.             PGP 4BD6C0CB |