sysinstall as a post-install tool

[Ron McDowell]

Lawrence Stewart wrote:
> [switching to freebsd-sysinstall@ which I'm no subscribed to, please 
> keep me CC'ed]
>
> On 01/04/12 11:27, Marcel Moolenaar wrote:
>>
>> On Jan 3, 2012, at 3:33 PM, Eitan Adler wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> In the the recent sysinstall thread there seems to be general 
>>> agreement that
>>> having a post-install configuration tool is a good thing. Until such a
>>> tool is written I think it would be a good idea to use sysinstall for
>>> this purpose.  I am willing to do the work to restore sysinstall and
>>> maintain it as a post-install tool until a new one is written.
>>
>> I though sade was created for that purpose, because sysinstall was too
>> much tied to the installation process. If sysinstall comes back, sade
>> definitely has to go:
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> r161060 | netchild | 2006-08-07 16:35:49 -0700 (Mon, 07 Aug 2006) | 9 
>> lines
>>
>> Say welcome to 'sade', the SysAdmins Disk Editor. It's the fdisk and 
>> disklabel part
>> of sysinstall. So sysinstall may retire now, we have the important 
>> non-install part
>> of it covered.
>>
>> ATM it doesn't understand GEOM stuff (like mirror, stripe, raid, 
>> ...), but patches
>> to change this and to clean it up internally are more than welcome.
>>
>> Submitted by:   mami at nyitolap.hu
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> In general I think it's a bad idea to revive sysinstall. It doesn't
>> function appropriately on most architectures that FreeBSD supports
>> and it's definitely the opposite of what we've been working towards
>> for at least the last 5 years.
>
> In the sysinstall removal thread, Ron (CC'ed) suggested he might be 
> interested in getting involved with writing a post installation config 
> script which leverages bsdinstall's sh code where possible, but is 
> separate and stand alone. Ron's extensive sysadmin background would be 
> very useful in developing such a tool, so it seems silly not to take 
> the offer and run with it to see where we end up.
>
> Ron, are you still interested in this project? What help and/or 
> support do you need to get things moving?
>
> Eitan, as discussed briefly on IRC, I suspect the amount of work 
> required to revive sysinstall and do all the hacking to make it do 
> what you suggest would be in the same ballpark as syncing up with Ron 
> and having a crack at a shell script based on a set of dialogs a la 
> bsdinstaller to achieve the same goal.
>
> I know you said you didn't want to write a new tool, so if getting 
> involved with the above doesn't take your fancy, perhaps just waiting 
> to see what comes of the effort to write said tool would be prudent.
>
> Cheers,
> Lawrence

I [Ron] just added myself to the sysinstall list.

A comment about the "sade" mention above...sade performs a very small 
part of what sysinstall does and cannot be thought of as a replacement 
for sysinstall, just as a replacement for a small but vital part of it.  
I'm not sure if that's what the OP meant or not...but thought I'd throw 
it out there in case anyone did.

Yes, I'm in the process of building up a box I can dedicate to this 
project...new HD arrived today.

What I envision is a text based system administration suite that will 
[hopefully] do everything that the "Configure" option on the top level 
of the sysinstall menu does.  I see it as being part of the base OS, 
such that once one has rebooted from HD after the install and logged in 
as root [or user+su], a menu can be brought up by entering "sysadmin" or 
such.  Does "sysadmin" work for a name?  I kinda like it.

I plan on basically going through the sysinstall post-configuration menu:

Distributions               Install additional distribution sets       
Documentation installation  Install FreeBSD Documentation set          
Packages                    Install pre-packaged software for FreeBSD  
Root Password               Set the system manager's password          
Fdisk                       The disk Slice (PC-style partition) Editor 
Label                       The disk Label editor                      
User Management             Add user and group information             
Console                     Customize system console behavior          
Time Zone                   Set which time zone you're in              
Media                       Change the installation media type         
Mouse                       Configure your mouse                       
Networking                  Configure additional network services      
Security                    Configure system security options          
Startup                     Configure system startup options           
TTYs                        Configure system ttys.                     
Options                     View/Set various installation options      
HTML Docs                   Go to the HTML documentation menu (post-ins
Load KLD                    Load a KLD from a floppy                   


and as close as reasonable, stick to the same task flow.  I plan on 
writing it against 10-current and look at back-porting to 9 after it's 
somewhat stable.

One new, important, and not-so-difficult task will be: on exiting, check 
the sanity of /etc/rc.conf and complain if needed, but allow the user to 
override the safety-switch if foot-shooting is really requested.  :)  
I'm a firm believer of not disallowing anything.

-- 
Ron McDowell
San Antonio TX