Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 23:59:56 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> To: Rob Lytle <jan6146@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sysinstall is still inadequate after all of these years Message-ID: <20080702235800.H47773@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <784966050807021123l267aa20en39eb513c12c90ad2@mail.gmail.com> References: <784966050807021123l267aa20en39eb513c12c90ad2@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, 2 Jul 2008, Rob Lytle wrote: > My depressing analysis- YMMV. I've used FreeBSD since 1998. The good news is that there are no less than three in-progress sysinstall replacements. At least two have been posted about recently with test ISOs for 7.0. And there are at least a couple of other variations floating around, such as the PC-BSD installer. So I think we can expect to see non-trivial progress here in the next year. My primary concern about some of these replacement installer projects is that they've placed a strong focus on making them graphical -- I actually couldn't care less about GUIs (and I think they actually hurt my configurations, since I use serial consoles a lot), but what I do want is a very tight and efficient install process, which I feel sysinstall does badly on (not just for the reasons you specify). Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge > > 1..Installing the packages off of the menu on the 3 CDROMs is an incredibly > tedious miserable process. I had to switch out the CD's around 40 times. > If you don't believe me, just mark a whole bunch of random packages after > obtaining the 7.0 release CD's, ad then install. Its frustrating and almost > like Windows, except its a bit faster as replacing CD's is faster than > reboots. > > 2. When installing any given package, if a dependency is already there , > the package aborts and then goes though some loop where you have to press > OK half a dozen times. Thats insane. > > I think the CD switching problem would be to install all the packages at > once from CD1, then CD2, then CD3. As for the second case, I don't know > enough about the infrastructure to suggest any thing except to perhaps > comment that code in its entirety or put in switch to bypass already > installed dependencies. > > I wish I knew more about your infrastructure to fix this myself. Is it > written in Python? Thats the only language I'm not so rusty at. I've > programmed in 5 languages, but that was long ago. I'm old. But someone who > knows the system could probably fix it fast. I think this is such an > inherent infrastructure problem that has existed so long that a bug report > would be futile. > > Food for thought. Thanks, > > Rob > > > -- > ---------------------------------------------------------- > http://www.youtube.com/user/whiteflluffyclouds > (Ham radio videos) > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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