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To: Paul Traina <pst@shockwave.com>
cc: current@freebsd.org, Bill Fenner <fenner@parc.xerox.com>
Subject: Re: userconfig doesn't work on tvi925 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 11 Sep 95 23:30:52 PDT."
             <199509120630.XAA12900@precipice.shockwave.com> 
From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM>
Reply-To: davidg@Root.COM
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 23:57:10 -0700
Sender: current-owner@freebsd.org
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>All you need to get to user mode on the install disk is a working floppy
>drive and a working console.  It's -highly- unlikely you will need to change
>the floppy drive or the location/irq of com1, or the address of your vga
>device.  In point of fact, you're ALREADY hosed if those aren't where you
>expected them to be, because the boot loader and the console driver that
>userconfig() uses wouldn't work in the first place.

   The configuration for the disk controller that you'll be installing on has
to be set before the kernel does it's device probes. Otherwise there is no
way to access the disk to save the settings. We can't save them to the floppy
and reboot because the kernel is special (it's "kzip" compressed). This is
actually one of several "chicken and egg" complications. This means that the
kernel-based "userconfig" is a requirement at least for now. This whole thread
started when the idea was proposed to improve the current interface to make
it more 'new user' friendly. Whether or not that was a good idea remains to
be seen. I personally don't like the 'visual' interface as I find it quite
a bit more difficult to use than the simple CLI. ...but my opinion appears
to be a minority one.
   I don't see the harm in making 'userconfig' a USERCONFIG kernel option,
however. In fact, it originally started out being an option, but everyone
seemed to agree that it was too useful to ever be without...so we made it
standard.

-DG