Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:06:51 +0000 From: krad <kraduk@gmail.com> To: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-current Current <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSDInstall: merging to HEAD Message-ID: <AANLkTi=kyN-pMbUwK=PxOrcpB4caE4zSbsNypjWXpQot@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4D309563.1000404@freebsd.org> References: <4D309563.1000404@freebsd.org>
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On 14 January 2011 18:26, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> wrote: > > As those of you who have been reading freebsd-sysinstall and freebsd-arch= know, I have been working for a few weeks on a lightweight new installer n= amed 'bsdinstall'. This is designed to replace sysinstall for the 9.0 relea= se. > > After two weeks of testing and bug fixes on the sysinstall list, I believ= e this now has all required functionality and is ready to be merged into th= e main source tree. I would like to do this on Tuesday, 18 January. Switchi= ng this to be the default installer would happen a few weeks after that, pe= nding discussion on release formats with the release engineering team. This= should provide a sufficient testing period before 9.0 and allow a maximal = number of bugs to be discovered and solved before the release is shipped. > > Demo ISO for i386: http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/bsdinstall-i386-= 20110114.iso.bz2 > SVN repository: svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/nwhitehorn/bsdinstall > Wiki page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/BSDInstall > > Goals > ----- > The primary goal of BSDInstall is to provide an easily extensible install= er without the limitations of sysinstall, in order to allow more modern ins= tallations of FreeBSD. This means that it should have additional features t= o support modern setups, but simultaneously frees us to remove complicating= features of sysinstall like making sure everything fits in floppy disk-siz= ed chunks. > > New Features: > - Allows installation onto GPT disks on x86 systems > - Can do installations spanning multiple disks > - Allows installation into jails > - Eases PXE installation > - Virtualization friendly: can install from a live system onto disk > =A0images > - Works on PowerPC > - Streamlined system installation > - More flexible scripting > - Easily tweakable > - All install CDs are live CDs > > Architecture > ------------ > BSDInstall is a set of tools that are called in sequence by a master scri= pt. These tools are, for example, the partition editor, the thing that fetc= hes the distributions from the network, the thing that untars them, etc. Si= nce these are just called in sequence from a shell script, a scripted insta= llation can easily replace them with other things, (e.g. hard-coded gpart c= ommands), leave steps out, add new ones, or interleave additional system mo= difications. > > Status > ------ > This provides functionality most similar to the existing sysinstall 'Expr= ess' track. It installs working, bootable systems you can ssh into immediat= ely after reboot on i386, amd64, sparc64, powerpc, and powerpc64. There is = untested support for pc98. The final architecture on which we use sysinstal= l, ia64, is currently unsupported, because I don't know how to set up booti= ng on those systems -- patches to solve this are very much welcome. > > There are still some missing features that I would like to see in the rel= ease, but these do not significantly impact the functionality of the instal= ler. Some will be addressed before merging to HEAD, in particular the lack = of a man page for bsdinstall. Others, like configuration of wireless networ= king and ZFS installation, can happen between merge and release. The test I= SOs are also lacking a ports tree at the moment, which is a statement about= the slow upload speed of my DSL line and not about the final layout of rel= eases. > > Please send any questions, comments, or patches you may have, and please = be aware when replying that this email has been cross-posted to three lists= . Technical discussion (bug reports, for instance) should be directed to th= e freebsd-sysinstall list only. Most other discussion belongs on -sysinstal= l and -current. > -Nathan > _______________________________________________ > 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= " I dont follow the=A0freebsd-sysinstall and freebsd-arc list so sorry if this has already been discussed. From what I have seen pc-sysinstall already does all these things, and can install freebsd. Therefore why are we reinventing the wheel? I don't mean this as any disrespect to the work you have done.
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