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Date:      Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:22:08 -0600
From:      Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org>
To:        Shawn Webb <lattera@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Devin Teske <dteske@vicor.com>, freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD Installer Roadmap
Message-ID:  <4D5F4570.7090507@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTik3sRNhu9YM68d5z8GYsrzPn8VWC11QSHNmHDSi@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <4D35CFFB.3010302@freebsd.org> <4D5E945F.60106@freebsd.org> <61079648-D76C-4699-AC4D-F6EBE64ABFFC@vicor.com> <AANLkTik3sRNhu9YM68d5z8GYsrzPn8VWC11QSHNmHDSi@mail.gmail.com>

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On 02/18/11 22:11, Shawn Webb 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).
>>
> I'm sure I'm not fully aware of the situation at your data center, but would
> systems that have 1,000+ day uptimes be candidates for upgrade to FreeBSD 9?
> It seems that if a system has that kind of uptime, it's a high priority
> server and uptime needs to be maintained.
>
> Maybe it would be possible to have both sysinstall and bsdinstall on the
> same install medium?

It may. If it is possible without enormous difficulty, this is something 
that should certainly be in place for 9.0. If it isn't possible, it may 
be a good idea to provide a second set of media with sysinstall for 
those who want it. I think that in any case, it is extremely unlikely 
that sysinstall will be entirely disconnected from the build before the 
release.

As regards the original posting, I totally share Devin's concern about 
wide hardware compatibility, including with very old hardware, and wish 
him the best of luck with sysinstall life support! As for bsdinstall, I 
have taken a substantial amount of effort to ensure that bsdinstall work 
on older hardware (I have tested it on a VT220 at 9600 baud connected to 
a 13-year-old Sun Ultra 5) and would regard it failing in any way on any 
hardware on which FreeBSD will boot as a serious bug.
-Nathan



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