From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue May 30 19:31:26 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id TAA20642 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 30 May 1995 19:31:26 -0700 Received: from localhost.cdrom.com (localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id TAA20628 ; Tue, 30 May 1995 19:31:22 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: freefall.cdrom.com: Host localhost.cdrom.com didn't use HELO protocol To: Julian Elischer cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [On the new Install] In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 30 May 95 17:46:45 PDT." <199505310046.RAA21178@ref.tfs.com> Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 19:31:21 -0700 Message-ID: <20621.801887481@freefall.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > things that didn't appear obvious, etc.: > when slicing and dicing^H^H^H^H^H^H^H partitionning, > there was no comforting little "Commit this to disk NOW" option > on any of the menues.. Well, you can `(U)ndo' at any time, so it seemed a little pointless to put the "point of no return button" there. You _are_ asked the Big Question later, when you go to actually write the whole mess out with the (I)nstall menu item. Would you prefer I call it (W)rite? I can and did at one point, but it just didn't quite look right. > I'm still not totally sure when the new disklabel and mbr are written > to disk, but assume it's later... if so it should be written > somewhere that this is the case.. It says in pretty bold letters "We are about to write all over your disk - last chance, etc etc.." Perhaps you didn't read that dialog? :-) > When selecting 'Geometry' (G) > it would be nice if the 3 fields were individually enterable, > in such a way that total records was a multple of the 3, Hmm.. This assumes that I have the correct total size.. :-) Not to be uncooperative, but I think I'm going to leave this one the way it is. It's not THAT hard to use, and anything else would be a lot more arcane for me to write. > Many screens (e.g. setting up netowrk stuff and intallation type) > have simply EXIT and QUIT as their two bottom > entries, yet you can't get to Huh?? You mean OK and Cancel, right? > This leaves the user in some doubt as to whether his selection has > been accepted, as the only way to get out of the screen is through QUIT > which intuitively suggests (to me at least) abandonning any changed Uhh.. On every menu where "looping" like this occurs (generally for good reason) it does say "select Cancel" when done. I don't really see how I can make it mny plainer than that! :-) Are we talking about the same installation here? :-) > There is no way to get those last N blocks (not a whole 'cylinder') > into a slice (particularly the BSD slice, at least not without > doing mental arithmetic.. (once again prone to pilot error)). The cylinder rounding is done in libdisk and was generally felt to be a good thing. Perhaps we can make it optional, with a knob someplace. > there is no comment that the VT4 shell is CHROOT'ed to the hd.. > this should be made plain... it toke me about 5 minutes > to figure out why I couldn't get to /mnt when I could see it in 'mount' Heck, the VT4 isn't even _documented_.. :-) It's really meant to be a special "wizard" feature only. > We know all the names for various SLICE types so why not print them... Excuse me? All the ones we know, we print. > if I'd wanted to do something a little less normal. > I still couldn't directly edit fdisk of disklabel entries which > is something I think is important for non-standard > installs.. I also didn't How do you suggest that work? It's difficult for me to react to this when I'm not esactly sure what you have in mind.. :) > see how one could do a 'partial re-install' > if one had a partly corrupted FS, and wanted to just download again, > without newfsing everything... > No problem. Just (M)ount the entries rather than creating them. When the partition and label editors are doc'd, this will be explained in more detail. Thanks for the feedback! You're the first who's really said anything, aside from Poul who doesn't count since he helped me write all of this! :-) Jordan