Offering sysinstall(8) as a choice in the FreeBSD 9 installation media

[Devin Teske]

Long ago (on this list) it was previously discussed (and a consensus was
reached) that the FreeBSD 9 installer should have two offerings to achieve two
high-level goals:

1. Ease the transition from sysinstall(8) to bsdinstall
2. Gradually "vet" bsdinstall over time (over the next 2 or 3 major releases --
8/9 or 8/9/10, where either one of 10 or 11 will be free of sysinstall).

The process of integrating sysinstall(8) into the current RELENG_9 installer is
not difficult and I am volunteering.

The choice for selecting sysinstall versus bsdinstall will be presented to the
user during the kernel options menu.

See the following two pictures to get an idea:

Picture 1 showing a proposed menu-addition to the RELENG_9 installer, defaulting
to bsdinstall

http://twitpic.com/89l2ub/full

Picture 2 showing sysinstall selected by the user:

http://twitpic.com/89l4n6/full

Choosing bsdinstall (or simply allowing the timer to reach zero and boot, as
bsdinstall would be the default) would result in booting directly into the
ISO0-9660 structure as is currently done by the 9.0-RELEASE media.

Choosing sysinstall on the other-hand, would result in booting into the mfsroot
structure that sysinstall(8) has always used.

Later down the road, when bsdinstall becomes feature-complete and/or is stable
enough to replace sysinstall, the menu option simply goes away.
-- 
Devin

P.S. With consensus reached, we'll then take this discussion to re@

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