Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 01:30:26 -0400 (EDT) From: robert@fledge.watson.org To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@freebsd.org Cc: robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org Subject: bin/14318: sysinstall user creation--various things Message-ID: <199910140530.BAA29168@fledge.watson.org>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>Number: 14318 >Category: bin >Synopsis: sysinstall upon install has some counter-intuitive features >Confidential: no >Severity: non-critical >Priority: low >Responsible: freebsd-bugs >State: open >Quarter: >Keywords: >Date-Required: >Class: change-request >Submitter-Id: current-users >Arrival-Date: Wed Oct 13 22:40:00 PDT 1999 >Closed-Date: >Last-Modified: >Originator: Robert Watson >Release: FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386 >Organization: >Environment: 3.3-RELEASE during install >Description: A few simple ones, just cosmetic but confused novice user... - During post-configuration, the choice of adding users is given. For some reason, the sysinstall cui offers defaults to starting uid's at 1001 not 1000, which is what userland adduser seems to start at. This is a minor inconsistency that could cause confusiuon. - Sanity checking is not performed on the home directory field in the adduser area of sysinstall. At the very least, it might make sense to verify that a "/" is at the beginning of the directoryname. Another thing that might be nice is a "default home directory" popping up after the username is entered, like the domain name popping up automatically when a hostname is entered in the networking configuration. My novice user entered "robert" as the homedir, which simply failed to come into existence causing him some confusion. There is online help, but I'm not sure it was advertised. - During sysinstall, there are times when F1 may be pressed for help. I don't believe this is advertised everywhere it is possible. - Sysinstall doesn't provide a way to configure a hostname without configuring networking. Also, a hostname is prompted for on each interface. It seems like, given the hostname is a single kernel and rc.conf variable, that perhaps it should be a seperate configuration item. The (Amnesiac) thing is cute though. - Would be nice if sysinstall remembered what distributions are installed, my novice user would go back occasionally and discover all the distributions had "uninstalled themselves" while he was off adding packages. This is a more serious feature and probably isn't easy to address. - In the sysinstall adduser screen, sanity checking is performed on the shell field, but a list of valid shells is not presented to the user. How is the user to know where tcsh is if they are not familiar with FreeBSD's disk layout? I'm not sure a pullup is possible in our cui interface, but something is probably desirable there--we know what the possible shells are because we check before adding the user, so we could hopefully expose that to the user somehow. Another stumbling block for the novice user. - In general, it seems like having a third [Help] button at the bottom of each screen might be really useful in making the help more accessible. - Use of the space bar and enter key is inconsistent--in some places to select something, you use space (distributions, packages, etc..) to get to submenus. In other places, you use enter (desktop configuration) -- my novice user was puzzled by this at first, until I explained that the first choice was space to select something, and if that didn't work, then to try enter. Also, the left-right and buttons at the bottom confused the user. This is, of course, fairly cosmetic and has to do with our cui, but worth changing if we get the opportunity to do it easily :-). - No description for ftp package category - Netscape 46 package didn't install -- I assume it wanted a network to download with, but given that this was a network-free machine, it didn't work. This was counter-intuitive and didn't provide feedback to the user as to why there was a failure, nor did the package appear to be tagged as requiring network access at install time. >How-To-Repeat: Take novice user, computer, and 3.3-RELEASE CDROM. Place in oven at 350 degrees. Cook until golden brown, or to taste. >Fix: Sorry no patches, but if you want a novice user I have several :-). Watching a novice user install the system was fairly enlightening--I guess I've always just worked around the counter-intuitisms of sysinstall, so I didn't think of any of these as problems. Go figure. My plan is to apply my fresh novice users on each new prerelease CD from now on. Who knows, maybe it's useful... >Release-Note: >Audit-Trail: >Unformatted: To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199910140530.BAA29168>