Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 10:59:11 -0800 From: Garrett Cooper <gcooper@FreeBSD.org> To: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSDInstall ISO images Message-ID: <AANLkTik2JUHBDAGhGTyD9sDjDocYWo94SXLOnS=%2B2KzC@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4D28EB32.9090807@freebsd.org> References: <4D28EB32.9090807@freebsd.org>
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On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> wrote: > I've spent some time integrating bsdinstall into startup of install CDs, > mostly related to building useful live-CD-based installers. An i386 image > can be found here (other architectures may follow, as my very slow DSL line > permits): > > http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/bsdinstall-i386-20110108.iso.bz2 > > The source for this can be found at: > > svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/nwhitehorn/bsdinstall > > The bits related to live CD usage are the testsystem.sh and rc.local files. > Instead of running sysinstall as an init replacement, I have written a small > rc.local script that gives the user the option to either start the > installer, open a single-user-mode style shell, or to continue to boot to a > multi-user live CD. Also, instead of the md root used by sysinstall, this > just boots from the CD directly. This prevents the need for sysinstall's > media selection, since the distribution files are in the mounted root file > system. > > I would appreciate any comments or test results. Not sure if it matters anymore, but here are my comments: NOTE: this was using http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/bsdinstall-i386-20110118.iso.bz2 . 1. The i386 image (apparently) isn't compiled with ATACAM, etc support so opening /dev/cd0 always fails with ENODEV. 2. There's a lot of noise at bootup related to missing files. Putting in a dummy /etc/fstab, adding hostid_enable="NO", and setting hostname="" to a dummy value in rc.conf will help weed out some noise. 3. The initial dialog beeped when I first pressed the right key on my keyboard. Maybe hw.syscons.bell=0 would help? 4. Splitting up the Keyboard Menu into regions and providing human readable names would help. Partition Editor (I used Manual for the first try): 1. It would be helpful if the cursor was at the end of the textbox so that I didn't have to position the cursor at the end or press the delete key. 2. K is a bogus suffix for kilo-; k is correct. 3. Having a mountpoint for a bsdlabel partition doesn't make sense and is confusing. 4. Backing out of the Partition Manager and going back to the previous dialogs is impossible. 5. Noting that the values (freebsd-ufs, etc) map back to gpart driven values would be helpful. I exited the install and tried again on the command line. Couldn't conjure up the right gpart commands (manpage sucks for what I was looking for -- creating a new partition), I went back into the partedit command that was in /usr/libexec/ and entered in data manually . Committed my changes which threw me back into the prompt and then hit ^d to get back into the installer proper. The first run around failed for some odd reason (claimed it couldn't create boot/kernel.gz, or whatever, so there might be some error checking missing with mount, mkdir, etc). Chose restart, walked through the process again and chose manual, made sure the slice was properly configured for / and swap was setup, then continued. This time the install went through properly. Progress bar: I think you're on the right track by simplifying the install, but it could be polished to say: kernel world distribution (in what context is distribution? Is it configuration files, etc from `make distribution' ?) Configuring Network (etc) Seems like this could have been done earlier on to shrink the CD size down a bit. Add Users (YAY! something that finally works) - Prompts seem ok. - Login class - getting too specific IMO; this should be done after the first boot. - Home directory - /usr/home was the traditional home directory root for BSD I thought. - Home directory permissions - as an aside, what are the default? - Use password-based authentication - what other options are there other than not having a password or using a non-master.passwd backend like LDAP, etc? - Lock out account after creation - I would remove this; again, it seems like something that an admin can do after first boot. In general: Some of the dialogs are a bit small (like the DHCP status dialog). Enlarging them might help. Hopefully this feedback is helpful. Thanks! -Garrett
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