From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Aug 4 16:41:41 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA17350 for freebsd-stable-outgoing; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 16:41:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from mail.double-barrel.be (mail.double-barrel.be [194.7.102.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA17329 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 16:41:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mvergall@mail.double-barrel.be) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by mail.double-barrel.be (8.9.1/8.8.8) id BAA08006; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 01:40:03 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from mvergall@mail.double-barrel.be) Received: from ns.double-barrel.be(194.7.102.18) via SMTP by mail.double-barrel.be, id smtpdDt8001; Wed Aug 5 01:39:59 1998 Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 01:39:49 +0200 (CEST) From: "Michael C. Vergallen" X-Sender: mvergall@ns.double-barrel.be To: Chris Hill cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Install *actually* friendly In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Chris Hill wrote: > the stuff. > > Gripes: > > 1. The instructions-docs-readmes pertaining to the installation need to be > more explicit on the fact that the boot floppy's little kernel has enough > smarts to handle an ftp installation all by itself. As they are, the docs > seem to have an underlying presumption that the user is installing on an > existing PC which is already running WinDOS. So much so, that I was under > the impression that one needed some sort of pre-existing internet > connectivity in order to install via ftp. (This was a virgin hard drive.) I can see this could cause some problems in the eye of someone not accustommed to PC hardware, but the fact is that most install floppy's for most Unisis can install without requiring anything else besides the boot floppy or floppys. however one does need to have access to a working system to create a boot floppy on. > 2. Let's say some poor schmuck is trying to do an installation from > floppies. If one of the diskettes is bad, why does the installer claim to > have encountered a "Write failure on transfer!" when in fact it was a READ > error due to the bad floppy? > I think that is due to the fact that the comparisson off the byte sizes is different and it assumes that the floppys are correct. > 3. The schmuck in question can always flip over to the other virtual console > and look at the debugging info, but only if he knows to press alt-Fx. The > only place I saw this mentioned was in the on-screen help for the *ftp* > installation, but no mention was made anywhere else. The virtual console is > a truly great feature, but it needs to be documented. True. > > Once I got this stuff straightened out, the installation was about as > painless as it could possibly be - FreeBSD practically installs itself. > > Oh yeah, one more thing... > > 4. Since FreeBSD runs on PC hardware, I would have thought the default > configuration would be set up to deal with all the "normal" devices one > might expect to find on a PC. Although I don't anticipate using the floppy > drive much if at all, still, it *is* there. I would have liked not to have > had to manually edit my /etc/fstab just to be able to use my floppy drive. No .. I would not like to see this happen for the simple reason that I see that most poeple disable the floppy in bios when done installing the system. On some off my systems I disable and remove the floppy after installation to make shure no clown tampers with the data contained on those systems or in event off the systems going down enabling the system to reboot itself without having to worry that a floppy might be in the drive. Michael To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message