From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Feb 21 22:12:53 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CE987106566C; Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:12:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from josh@tcbug.org) Received: from out1.smtp.messagingengine.com (out1.smtp.messagingengine.com [66.111.4.25]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8332C8FC15; Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:12:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from compute2.internal (compute2.nyi.mail.srv.osa [10.202.2.42]) by gateway1.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2292A20526; Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:12:53 -0500 (EST) Received: from frontend1.messagingengine.com ([10.202.2.160]) by compute2.internal (MEProxy); Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:12:53 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=messagingengine.com; h=from:to:subject:date:cc:references:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:message-id; s=smtpout; bh=GAI2tCTUeQo7F+owe3BD8COWyN4=; b=GWc+AQm039RnN9neBTYr8eRsVXjPl+NcpLGaPCUVziCu0uL7lRS5D/4JODeKnp9E9WroWp2N6su4eFH4SNM+qjrnoexkcZhS4UZFayzmhQLbQj6HlHGbVau4nelOm8REYE2qTNvVrEkaf+UmnIB/xZ/PkPFFijUtmu7dBrQOILc= X-Sasl-enc: 9cPRiNuzrEYKMYCpYghgIOiSBCn4md3A1aw54i0Svzh4 1298326372 Received: from tcbug.ixsystems.com (74-34-19-98.dr01.rsmt.mn.frontiernet.net [74.34.19.98]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id B2B094094EA; Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:12:52 -0500 (EST) From: Josh Paetzel To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:12:41 -0600 User-Agent: KMail/1.13.5 (FreeBSD/8.1-RELEASE; KDE/4.4.5; amd64; ; ) References: <4D35CFFB.3010302@freebsd.org> <61079648-D76C-4699-AC4D-F6EBE64ABFFC@vicor.com> <201102190844.43267.bruce@cran.org.uk> In-Reply-To: <201102190844.43267.bruce@cran.org.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="nextPart3047959.TjBYZPoihf"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <201102211612.51233.josh@tcbug.org> Cc: Bruce Cran , freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Devin Teske , freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org, Nathan Whitehorn Subject: Re: FreeBSD Installer Roadmap X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:12:53 -0000 --nextPart3047959.TjBYZPoihf Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Saturday, February 19, 2011 02:44:42 am Bruce Cran wrote: > On Saturday 19 February 2011 03:04:39 Devin Teske wrote: > > There are many reasons for this, and none of them are selfish (although > > it remains possible to drum-up some selfish reason, all of the reasons > > behind our motivation are in-fact unselfish). Truth-be-told, I welcome > > the replacement of sysinstall but am very wary that ANY replacement will > > be able to exactly replicate the hardware compatibility that sysinstall > > currently enjoys. I do indeed envision a great celebration as FreeBSD-9 > > bucks sysinstall but also at the same time have nightmares of receiving > > waves of calls from people having trouble (for example) "installing > > FreeBSD-9 on their AMD K6 based system, circa long-long-ago in a > > universe far-far-away." (yes, we do have data centers running that very > > equipment with uptime in the 1,000's of days). >=20 > I think bsdinstall as it currently is is simple enough that there shouldn= 't > be any compatibility issues: it uses gpart for partitioning, runs tools > like tzsetup to configure settings etc. so there's far less to go wrong > than sysinstall's custom code which for example could crash on the > "probing devices" screen. pc-sysinstall has been used as the PC-BSD installer for quite a while now, = and=20 has done a lot of installs on a lot of different hardware platforms. I'll= =20 wager that the compatibility of the shell command gpart is a better bet tha= n=20 the "stick your thumbs in you ears and yell nananana while you scribble 1's= =20 and 0's to a disk and voila, there's a disklabel" approach that sysinstall= =20 uses. That being said, sysinstall holds FreeBSD back in a lot of ways, using GPT= =20 labeling, installing to ZFS, or gmirror, using geli, all require you to boo= t=20 to a shell and do an install by hand. I'm sure more people can chime in to= =20 limitations in sysinstall than I can think of off the top of my head. So my question is: Given that everyone involved is very conscious of lockin= g=20 out FreeBSD from hardware platforms due to installer compatibility, wouldn'= t a=20 better use of your time be investing in the future and ensuring that it wor= ks=20 on legacy platforms as opposed to putting sysinstall on life support when i= t=20 already has some fairly serious missing functionality, that is only likely = to=20 become more of an issue in the future? =2D-=20 Thanks, Josh Paetzel --nextPart3047959.TjBYZPoihf Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.15 (FreeBSD) iQEcBAABAgAGBQJNYuNhAAoJEKFq1/n1feG2ys8H/2ftBaqnaq9mZcXsY0iWQ8J9 tz35avx7w4633MOdWCdjMUIFfQXStRCR1L18fBSXPfhzhd6hgzkUDRHZmpk/OZfo 6PBzHU/bGBb2qSYpPblUiCLeh+y8rNVSezSKazay5B8Cr2teb5sVFBm1n45H4sx1 ZO6q+7zBhFSfmGxF62H9zktk0m81lmI0DU5Uu9WYUdZlUO9FUOD2cWAFYwIux1OG tMzZTfqEmPllgzb3nneWtxZt9l8ZEki7RryHtE0JyhwPk3w0U0ytameZ5dReK+S4 A1Nua+1Y5HEzpfWFCxYDiT8cxwru67g2bq03iBZrgAfVnobffS04XB2HuTfjbzA= =3JpJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart3047959.TjBYZPoihf--