Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 01:08:48 -0500 (EST) From: Adam <bsdx@looksharp.net> To: <stable@freebsd.org> Subject: sysinstall nits Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.33.0103112323170.88170-100000@turtle.looksharp.net>
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Hi, I was giving the 3/11/01 stable snapshot a test install to see if anything stood out, and here is my wishlist. I think it would be nice if any of these got in at any point in time, I'll leave the judgement up to others on urgency. If more information would be helpful I'll be glad to provide it, and directions for a more fruitful place to post will be accepted. I breifly considered the qa list but according to the archives it looks dead to me. - selecting HTML Docs from the Configuration menu installs lynx without confirming, I think it would be prudent to not install it until they see what is in the menu. The choice says "Go to the HTML Documentation menu" and mentions nothing about needing to download software just to enter a menu. There is nothing about the HTML Documentation menu that looks like it needs lynx to display itself, so I think it would be nice to wait until something is selected in that menu, and then ask the user if they think the item is worth the time it takes to fetch the lynx package if not installed. Installing lynx without asking is an annoying delay and small waste of space for the well connected, even more annoying if selected by accident, and could take ages on a slow modem connection. Even more alarming/annoying is ctrl-c'ing the download of lynx and selecting yes makes sysinstall exit and reboot the computer! - something I've mentioned before and jkh thought it was a good idea but it never appeared in the product; I think a date and timestamp in the comment line added to rc.conf by sysinstall would be informative and useful. - drop a text file onto the system somewhere permanent with the original installation date and version? Servers get old quickly and it gets hard to remember when it was installed and what original version if it has been upgraded since, and the original version and install date can be helpful information for upgrades if you need to determine what boot loader you have installed, etc.. - I am testing on a P120 with a ~200m hd. If I boot up the install floppies, goto configure, fdisk, a for entire disk, yes for true partition entry, W to write it out, yes I am sure, enter on bootmgr, it writes it out successfully and I choose OK. Q to quit fdisk, it asks me about the boot manager again, I dont care because I already installed it so I choose bootmgr again. I then choose Label from the menu, C to create a 100M /, C to make the rest swap, W to write, Yes I'm sure, WARNING! Unable to swap to /dev/ad0s1b: Device not configured This may cause the installation to fail blah blah, choose OK, Unable to make new root filesystem on /dev/ad0s1a! Command returned status 1. Alt-F2 with debugging turned on reveals: DEBUG: Scanning disk ad0 for root filesystem DEBUG: Found rootdev at ad0s1a! DEBUG: Scanning disk ad0 for swap partitions DEBUG: Found swapdev at ad0s1b! DEBUG: Notify: Making a new root filesystem on /dev/ad0s1a DEBUG: Executing command `newfs -b 8192 -f 1024 /dev/ad0s1a' newfs: /dev/ad0s1a: `a' partition is unavailable The same messages are in this section when I dont commit fdisk information first, except it mentions adding /dev/ad0s1b as a swap device and successfully completing newfs without an error. Also, if I fdisk, q to exit that, label, and W to write, go back to the menu, go back in labeling, make new labels and try to write, it gives me the message: "You've already written out your changes - if you wish to overwrite them, you'll have to start this procedure again from the beginning". Thats better than outright failing, but it doesn't say what procedure I need to restart. The entire sysinstall(which means reboot if installing fresh)? Re-writing the info in fdisk(which doesn't help, it still gives the written out error message)? It seems if you write the fdisk information out, then W to commit in the labeler in sysinstall doesn't actually write out the labels, and swapon and newfs fail. I dont understand why you should be punished for writing out your fdisk information before going to label, perhaps a warning when choosing W that doing this before labeling during an install will make writing labels fail? I even tried doing Re-scan Devices in the options screen but that did not help. I believe something similar also happens when using sysinstall after the system is up, I recall when repartitioning disks that I would have to go in with sysinstall, fdisk, Write it out, exit sysinstall entirely, then go back in and label. Perhaps unrelated or fixed by now I'm not sure, but might be worth mentioning. Overall though when I install avoiding the partition issue it does install a bootable system so it seems to be up to my expectations for installation! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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