Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 15:21:45 -0400 (EDT) From: "Brandon D. Valentine" <bandix@looksharp.net> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.osd.bsdi.com> Cc: Wilko Bulte <wkb@freebie.demon.nl>, Gary Kline <kline@thought.org>, Antonio Bemfica <antonio@axolotl.ic.gc.ca>, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: /stand/sysinstall cannot find any disks ? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0008161457160.67364-100000@turtle.looksharp.net> In-Reply-To: <61447.966376821@localhost>
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On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: >> Better be quick or it will be adopted by an Amnesty activist group.. ;-) >> In other words: I meet an increasing number of people who use sysinstall >> for all sorts of stuff and love it. > >I'm sure the functionality it provides is appreciated and the desire >to provide such functionality is why I wrote it. Nonetheless, the >entire design and implementation of sysinstall and its satellite >binaries is far too simplistic and non-extensible given that what >people have been using since April of 1995 is nothing more than a >stick-and-bubblegum prototype which was never meant to live more than >six months. Here's my idea for the future of the install binary: Break what is now conceptually sysinstall into two seperate binaries, an install and a configuration binary. The install binary should be good at nothing more than calling the right programs to install the system, i.e. partition editor, disklabeler, and actually writing files to disk from a media source. Then a seperate binary should split out what is now the Post-Installation Configuration menu. That binary could be optionally called by the install binary at the end of the installation process, but it should stand alone. Maybe call it sysconfig or something. Then put sysinstall and sysconfig under /sbin or /usr/sbin. Chuck the existing method of building install floppies in favor of an extensible PicoBSD image. If you do this then you can provide easily configurable custom install floppies by letting people do things like add wicontrol to their crunch conf or specify a custom kernel when building the floppy. Then the proces of building that PicoBSD image can be intergarted into the world process and installed under /stand on every installworld. With this functionality split out it should be possible for willing hackers to add all sorts of support to the sysconfig binary independently of Jordan's pet sysinstall, which he can't have people mucking up for release reasons. Then the documentation project can start pointing at the sysconfig binary as an easy way to do _X_. Just a suggestion. Brandon D. Valentine -- bandix at looksharp.net | bandix at structbio.vanderbilt.edu "Truth suffers from too much analysis." -- Ancient Fremen Saying To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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