From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 3 08:28:33 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4300B1065674; Thu, 3 Jul 2008 08:28:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9F68A8FC13; Thu, 3 Jul 2008 08:28:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0662146B03; Thu, 3 Jul 2008 04:28:31 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 09:28:30 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Lothar Braun In-Reply-To: <486C8700.5020100@lobraun.de> Message-ID: <20080703092511.T69986@fledge.watson.org> References: <784966050807021123l267aa20en39eb513c12c90ad2@mail.gmail.com> <20080702235800.H47773@fledge.watson.org> <486C8700.5020100@lobraun.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sysinstall is still inadequate after all of these years X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:28:33 -0000 On Thu, 3 Jul 2008, Lothar Braun wrote: > Robert Watson wrote: > >> 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). > > Hmm, how should a tight and efficient installation process look like in your > opinion? And what are the other points that are bad in systinstall? For me, it's really about minimizing the time to get to a generic install from a CD or DVD. Most of the time, I don't do a lot of customization during the install -- I configure machines using DHCP, I add most packages later, and I tend to use default disk layouts since my servers don't multi-boot and the defaults currently seem "reasonable". I don't like being asked many more questions than whether or not to enable sshd, and what to set the root password to. This means that I find our current distributions menu a bit inefficient (I don't want sub-menus, I just want checkboxes), and that the inconsistency in the handling of the space/enter/tab/cursor keys across different libdialog interfaces in the install is awkward. The current generic and express installs seem to capture a lot of my desire, in that I can get a box installed in <5m including actual time to write out the file systems, which is great. I really don't want to lose this with a new installer :-). Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge