From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed May 4 04:34:31 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 189F216A4CE for ; Wed, 4 May 2005 04:34:31 +0000 (GMT) Received: from odin.ac.hmc.edu (Odin.AC.HMC.Edu [134.173.32.75]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CDD5B43D2F for ; Wed, 4 May 2005 04:34:30 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from brdavis@odin.ac.hmc.edu) Received: from odin.ac.hmc.edu (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by odin.ac.hmc.edu (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j444YKiQ028204; Tue, 3 May 2005 21:34:20 -0700 Received: (from brdavis@localhost) by odin.ac.hmc.edu (8.13.0/8.13.0/Submit) id j444YH4K028199; Tue, 3 May 2005 21:34:17 -0700 Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 21:34:17 -0700 From: Brooks Davis To: sam Message-ID: <20050504043417.GB26445@odin.ac.hmc.edu> References: <9533da6c050503173261897e65@mail.gmail.com> <42781AFD.8060803@tech-21.com.hk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="s/l3CgOIzMHHjg/5" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <42781AFD.8060803@tech-21.com.hk> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=8.0 tests=none autolearn=no version=2.63 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on odin.ac.hmc.edu cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSD Installer as a replacement for sysinstall? X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 04:34:31 -0000 --s/l3CgOIzMHHjg/5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 08:44:45AM +0800, sam wrote: > Travis Poppe wrote: >=20 > >Hello all, > > > >For quite some time I've been looking forward to seeing sysinstall go > >and be replaced with a new system that's user interface agnostic. This > >would allow developers to create a user interface of their choice > >without having to muck around with the internals of the installer. It > >seems that one of the major reasons this hasn't happened yet is simply > >due to lack of development. > > > >Correct me of I'm wrong, but as far as I know, this is what BSD > >Installer (the DragonFly team's installer) currently does. Other than > >"political" disagreements, are there really any good reasons for us > >not to look into using BSD Installer as a replacement for sysinstall? > >I believe either FreeSBIE or LiveBSD (FreeBSD LiveCD distributions) > >has already included the BSD Installer in a recent release. > > > >I know Scott Long has posed this idea to the list in the past. BSD > >Installer would provide the framework needed to make bells and > >whistles such as graphical installers and so forth much more likely in > >the future. If there are some out there who dislike the interface > >provided by BSD Installer, I don't think it would be too difficult to > >write a sysinstall lookalike UI for their system. > > > >=20 > > > I found the idea of bsdinstaller is designed for live CD, and the=20 > installation must be started in multi-user-mode, because when start up=20 > bsdinstaller, its background process is listening to port 9999, and the= =20 > GUI program start IPC with this port, then the installation begin. > As I have looked into the code, its IPC code does support pipe,=20 > althought I haven't had it tested, but I believe it is not too hard to=20 > change it into pipe, so the entire installation can be merged into=20 > FreeBSD for single-usr-mode installation. It's worth noting that the install CD is now a full live file system. I think it would be highly worthwhile if someone wanted to make sysinstall unmagic so it was run as part of a multiuser boot. The next obvious step would be to add a hook to allow the user to select an installer with sysinstall as the default (maybe even with a timeout). Once you've got that you can play with many installers easily. -- Brooks --=20 Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE. PGP fingerprint 655D 519C 26A7 82E7 2529 9BF0 5D8E 8BE9 F238 1AD4 --s/l3CgOIzMHHjg/5 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCeFDJXY6L6fI4GtQRAgYIAJwILHNW2J0HkexBfKTBGlt46/5/HQCfXZGE dXXAEI1PGuyyQgx50VrThXQ= =l8pL -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --s/l3CgOIzMHHjg/5--