Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 19:53:46 +0200 (CEST) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, craig@feniz.gank.org, ivoras@fer.hr Subject: Re: Sysinstall replacement Message-ID: <200706041753.l54HrkK9093864@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <20070604055757.GA2379@nowhere>
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Craig Boston wrote: > Ivan Voras wrote: > > See http://wiki.freebsd.org/finstall . > > Somewhat tangental, the only thing that really jumps out at me is this: > > > I propose the UFS+gjournal be the default FS type (even for > > root+boot?) > > I think this is not such a good idea. While I like gjournal, and use it > quite a bit, I don't think it's suitable as a default. > > For one thing, with default settings, it carves out a full GB of usable > space from each filesystem that it's used on. This would prove highly > surprising to new users, especially on smaller filesystems such as /var, > and may well cause them to think FreeBSD uses a highly inefficient > filesystem. > > Also, gjournal journals *everything*, not just metadata. When the data > and journal are on the same physical device, as they would be in most > setups that take the defaults, all write operations are effectively done > twice (modulo any write-combining). Again, this probably wouldn't be > expected for a default and would lead to perceived slowness. > > Both of these are quite acceptable tradeoffs for what gjournal does, but > the user should be aware of them before choosing to employ it. I think > it would be wonderful to have in the installer, just not as the default. I agree completely. Having it as a non-default option would be best. > I also don't think that ext2 should be offered in the installer, as > there have been periodic stability problems with it, and new users > accustomed to Linux may pick it out of habit and get bitten. Actually I think having it as an option would be good, but I agree that it could cause problems so a warning should be printed, indicating that UFS (or UFS2) is the native BSD file system, and that ext2fs only exists for Linux compatibility and might cause problems. > P.S. I pretty much never use sysinstall anymore, preferring to set up > things as gjournal and geli using Fixit mode, then just extract the > tarballs into the new filesystems. I use sysinstall to install FreeBSD on "virgin" machines or when there's a major jump (like from 4.x to 6.x). Of course, in all other cases I use source-level updates via "make world". > Having a good standalone partitioning tool would be nice though, > as doing all the math by hand can be tedious. Not sure if you already know this ... In the bsdlabel tool you can use "m" and "g" suffixes for sizes to specify megabytes and gigabytes, respectively, so you don't have to calculate block numbers. The size of the last partition can be given as "*" so it will receive all the remaining free space of the device. Furthermore you can use the "*" wildcard for the offsets, so the bsdlabel tool will calculate the offsets by adding the sizes of the preceding partitions. So, in fact, you don't have to do any math at all. If you want a curses GUI, you can run sysinstall with the apropriate functions (»sysinstall diskLabelEditor«). Personally I prefer bsdlabel(8), though, which throws me into my favourite editor (neither v* nor e*) and lets me edit the label directly. That's _much_ faster than navigating through sysinstall. YMMV, of course. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd "The ITU has offered the IETF formal alignment with its corresponding technology, Penguins, but that won't fly." -- RFC 2549
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