From owner-freebsd-arch Wed Jul 12 13:14: 4 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from bsdhome.dyndns.org (rdu162-228-096.nc.rr.com [24.162.228.96]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D486237BF47; Wed, 12 Jul 2000 13:14:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bsd@bsdhome.com) Received: from vger.bsdhome.com (vger [192.168.220.2]) by bsdhome.dyndns.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA01156; Wed, 12 Jul 2000 16:13:45 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from bsd@bsdhome.com) Received: from localhost (bsd@localhost) by vger.bsdhome.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA20120; Wed, 12 Jul 2000 16:13:44 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from bsd@vger.bsdhome.com) Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 16:13:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Dean To: Jack Rusher Cc: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" , Chuck Robey , obrien@FreeBSD.ORG, Sheldon Hearn , arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Knobs for optional software... In-Reply-To: <396BF7CD.C9D80CCA@integratus.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Jack Rusher wrote: > > Why isn't a sysinstall knob sufficient to install the > > LPR of choice? Such a knob seems to work fine for X > > and the various desktops (KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker)[3]. > > I think the knob approach is an excellent way to go. It seems to me > that the best installer for most people's needs would: > > o install almost nothing by default > o have knobs for nearly everything > o have "bundle" packages that group things together > o when a user requests a bundle, ask which (say) print system they > want (query on duplicates) > > We have something like that now with the "User, Developer, Kernel > Developer, etc" choice for which distributions to drop, so why not do > the same thing for install packaging? (I mean, aside from the huge > amount of work involved). We would, of course, need a little more > package metadata to make this anything but a maintenance nightmare, but > I think some XML and a clever architecture could work out pretty well. As a person who installs racks of systems at a time, I would ask that however you improve the interactive user interface to sysinstall, you preserve the scripting facility that allows us to perform "nearly hands-off" installs which the current sysinstall currently supports very well (or, at least, works well enough that I haven't sent in patches yet :)). Also, please don't lose the support for doing installs using the serial console. While I understand the desire to present a nice interface for interactive installations, please don't leave the server/cluster users out in the cold. For us, _requiring_ a graphical console and requiring lots of interaction with the installation program would be a hugangeous step backwards. -Brian -- Brian Dean bsd@FreeBSD.org bsd@bsdhome.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message