Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:54:17 -0600 From: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> To: Garrett Cooper <gcooper@FreeBSD.org> Cc: David Demelier <demelier.david@gmail.com>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSDInstall: merging to HEAD Message-ID: <4D38CB29.2030601@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <AANLkTim=n-fk3zORLxAnqqxsY4UG7GuhxYtTOnCa8_9p@mail.gmail.com> References: <4D309563.1000404@freebsd.org> <4D38AB1F.8090308@gmail.com> <AANLkTim=n-fk3zORLxAnqqxsY4UG7GuhxYtTOnCa8_9p@mail.gmail.com>
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On 01/20/11 17:44, Garrett Cooper wrote: > On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 1:37 PM, David Demelier > <demelier.david@gmail.com> wrote: >> On 14/01/2011 19:26, Nathan Whitehorn wrote: >>> As those of you who have been reading freebsd-sysinstall and >>> freebsd-arch know, I have been working for a few weeks on a lightweight >>> new installer named 'bsdinstall'. This is designed to replace sysinstall >>> for the 9.0 release. >>> >>> After two weeks of testing and bug fixes on the sysinstall list, I >>> believe this now has all required functionality and is ready to be >>> merged into the main source tree. I would like to do this on Tuesday, 18 >>> January. Switching this to be the default installer would happen a few >>> weeks after that, pending discussion on release formats with the release >>> engineering team. This should provide a sufficient testing period before >>> 9.0 and allow a maximal number of bugs to be discovered and solved >>> before the release is shipped. >>> >>> Demo ISO for i386: >>> http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/bsdinstall-i386-20110114.iso.bz2 >>> SVN repository: svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/nwhitehorn/bsdinstall >>> Wiki page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/BSDInstall >>> >>> Goals >>> ----- >>> The primary goal of BSDInstall is to provide an easily extensible >>> installer without the limitations of sysinstall, in order to allow more >>> modern installations of FreeBSD. This means that it should have >>> additional features to support modern setups, but simultaneously frees >>> us to remove complicating features of sysinstall like making sure >>> everything fits in floppy disk-sized chunks. >>> >>> New Features: >>> - Allows installation onto GPT disks on x86 systems >>> - Can do installations spanning multiple disks >>> - Allows installation into jails >>> - Eases PXE installation >>> - Virtualization friendly: can install from a live system onto disk >>> images >>> - Works on PowerPC >>> - Streamlined system installation >>> - More flexible scripting >>> - Easily tweakable >>> - All install CDs are live CDs >>> >>> Architecture >>> ------------ >>> BSDInstall is a set of tools that are called in sequence by a master >>> script. These tools are, for example, the partition editor, the thing >>> that fetches the distributions from the network, the thing that untars >>> them, etc. Since these are just called in sequence from a shell script, >>> a scripted installation can easily replace them with other things, (e.g. >>> hard-coded gpart commands), leave steps out, add new ones, or interleave >>> additional system modifications. >>> >>> Status >>> ------ >>> This provides functionality most similar to the existing sysinstall >>> 'Express' track. It installs working, bootable systems you can ssh into >>> immediately after reboot on i386, amd64, sparc64, powerpc, and >>> powerpc64. There is untested support for pc98. The final architecture on >>> which we use sysinstall, ia64, is currently unsupported, because I don't >>> know how to set up booting on those systems -- patches to solve this are >>> very much welcome. >>> >>> There are still some missing features that I would like to see in the >>> release, but these do not significantly impact the functionality of the >>> installer. Some will be addressed before merging to HEAD, in particular >>> the lack of a man page for bsdinstall. Others, like configuration of >>> wireless networking and ZFS installation, can happen between merge and >>> release. The test ISOs are also lacking a ports tree at the moment, >>> which is a statement about the slow upload speed of my DSL line and not >>> about the final layout of releases. >>> >>> Please send any questions, comments, or patches you may have, and please >>> be aware when replying that this email has been cross-posted to three >>> lists. Technical discussion (bug reports, for instance) should be >>> directed to the freebsd-sysinstall list only. Most other discussion >>> belongs on -sysinstall and -current. > GPT makes more sense on modern machines given the limitation of > disk sizes and the MBR partition schemes (and FWIW MBR is less > portable outside of the PC world anyhow), but it would be nice if it > was a knob that defaulted to appropriate values for certain > architectures as well, like PC98 -> MBR? Such a knob exists, and is used. On PC98, the default partition scheme is the PC98 one, on sparc64 VTOC8, etc. On x86, it is GPT. If you try to put / on a partition scheme that is known not to be bootable on your platform, you will get a warning. The bootable schemes on i386/amd64 are GPT, MBR, and bsdlabel. -Nathan
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