Date: Sun, 4 Jun 1995 11:19:03 +0800 (CST) From: Brian Tao <taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw> To: FREEBSD-HACKERS-L <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: More thoughts on the installer Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.91.950604111655.14315D-100000@leo>
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I've only installed 2.0.5A on one of the machines here so far,
holding off on the others for boot disk updates or 2.0.5R. Being a
nitpicker, I wrote down lots of little buglets, but nothing really
major. Most of the things I mention are from the first boot disk (my
mirror site didn't have the update yet), and most of the points have
already been mentioned by others.
First, the new installer is great!!! A lot of the user input has
been rearranged into more logical blocks, with the system prompting
for information, instead of having the user accidentally forget
something. The network configuration screen is rather impressive, and
the progress thermometers are a big improvement over a static screen
that just says "Extracting bindist, please wait..." :) Now on to my
nitpicks. :)
* The last line in the installer help file sounds a little awkward.
It reads "... once the system is up, up to a maximum of 12." Maybe
"... once the system is running, up to a maximum of 12." would sound
a little better. Like I said, I nitpick. :)
* If you enter scrollback, forget, and start typing, nothing apparent
happens until you exit scrollback and then all the keys are played
back. I know this is probably a syscons thing, but I thought I'd
mention it here.
* The release notes is buggered near the end. The mail address reads
"bugs@Fr" and that's it. Speaking of which, is it capitalized
"FreeBSD.ORG" just because it looks nice, or what? I thought it
would be less confusing if the text files just stuck to
"freebsd.org".
* Don't forget about the "==> Put more text into this section ;-) <=="
section at the end of the installer help. :)
* While I was browsing help, at some point I got a "uid 0 on /: file
system full" on the debuggin screen. This was before I proceeded to
partition/disklabel/install, so it can't be talking about the HD.
* The "Toggle extra debugging flag" should read "Turn on debugging
flag" (since selecting it again doesn't turn it off). A lot of menu
options like that need some sort of feedback to tell the user their
choice was registered (without having to flip to the debug screen).
* The Select Drives dialog box (before you entire the partition
editor) should remind the user to use the spacebar to select disks.
* The partition editor tells me the minimum partition size is 1
megabyte, but I cannot make one exactly 1 megabyte in size.
* What's an 'X' partition? Extended? Why would that apply within a
FreeBSD slice? When I tried to make lots and lots of filesystems,
the installer hung after I filled all eight slots on the screen.
* I assume the partition editor is doing the right thing when it uses
"newfs -u 2888" on an 800M partition, but "newfs -u 2720" on an 85M
one and "newfs -u 4096" on 50M and 30M ones?
* A couple of typos in the "Select Distributions" dialog: "Spelling
checker disctionary files..." and "...compatability...".
^ ^
* What's "XFree86 3.1.1L" (also in the same dialog)?
* The default shell in vty0 does not seem to have the PATH set, and no
usual shell utils are found (like 'ls', although I made do with
"echo *" in the meantime).
* If installing from a ufs filesystem, the "Value Required" dialog box
reads "...distribtion files..."
^^
* I accidentally selected the manpage distribution when I had not
FTP'd them over to a local disk. When it couldn't find the tarball,
it asked me if I wanted to try again later, and I said "no". It
then went on to extract the remaining packages (compat1x and
compat20), then it hung. The last line of the debug screen was
"4110 blocks" (the size of the compat20 file). It should have gone
on to display the dialog telling the user everything had been
unpacked.
* Instead of using <OK> and <Cancel> on many of the dialogs, wouldn't
<Set> and <Go back> (or similar) be better?
* The timezone config in the post-install process seems to be
reversing its idea of the BIOS clock being on local or UTC. My
clock was set to localtime, and when asked for the time, I typed it
in. The installer then presumed my clock was on UTC. Setting the
clock to UTC but giving the install the local time causes it to
think my clock was on localtime.
* There should be a more explicit dialog box after the post-install to
tell the user that everything is done and the machine can be
rebooted, enjoy your new FreeBSD 2.0.5 system, etc., etc. Having to
quit out of three or four layers of dialog boxes to reboot seems
sort of anti-climactic and unfulfilling to me. ;-)
* During another session of fiddling, I noticed I could go into the
partition editor wizard mode twice. Went in the first time,
exitted, forgot something, then tried to go back in. I get the "Are
you sure" dialog, but hitting OK just returns me to the partition
editor. Selecting cancel gives me the "That was a wise move!"
comment. ;-)
I apologize if some of the above are vague, or already addressed
in the latest boot floppy. It was pretty late at night, and I had
only anticipated at most an hour to get a 2.0.5A machine running
(ended up fudging around for three hours in an air-conditionless
room).
As for 2.0.5A itself, so far so good. top/pstat doesn't show the
correct amount of swap though (someone asked this already... bugfix
planned for 2.0.5R?).
--
Brian ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") Tao
taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw <-- work ........ play --> taob@io.org
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