Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:19:37 -0800 From: "Philip J. Koenig" <pjklist@ekahuna.com> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Sysinstall issues Message-ID: <3C06D099.6034.20CB5AA@localhost>
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[Apologies in advance if this is a duplicate, but I saw no evidence
this post made it to the list the first time I tried, so am re-
sending]
=====================================================================
Some time ago, I mentioned on the list some issues I had with
sysinstall, including some stuff on my personal wish-list. Jordan
indicated he would fix some of the obvious interface bugs, and as for
some of the "additions" I probably needed to pitch-in to help them
occur but I hadn't gotten around to it yet.
Now I'm installing a new 4.4-RELEASE box, and I'm newly reminded of
some of these things. List:
- Using sysinstall in a first-time installation, after installing
"pre-packaged software", I was left at a top-level menu of the list
of packages, which I had already installed. The syntax here is
confusing because after you have installed things, you now have 2
choices: "OK" (not sure what I'm OK'ing), which takes you to a
submenu for whatever package group the cursor is resting on (not what
I want, I want to escape), or "Install", which seems scary because it
implies it's going to do everything over again. The correct choice
happens to be "Install", assuming you haven't selected anything
additional, after which you get an error saying "no packages were
selected for extraction".. but it's way counter-intuitive. Only
after receiving that "error message" do you get taken back to the
previous menu. I'd say the simple addition of a 3rd option to the
package install list ("Cancel" or "Exit") would solve the problem
neatly. (INTERFACE BUG)
- Sysinstall provides no indication of the size of chosen packages or
distribution sets. I often feel like I'm driving blind here, not
having any idea whether a chosen package or distribution will fill my
disk to capacity before I even finish the install. (WISHLIST)
- Sysinstall also provides no indication of package dependencies. I
am constantly taken by surprise that some package I chose to install
has a massive list of dependencies, in particular X-related packages
which are useless to me when I (frequently) setup boxes without any
sign of X-Windows. I believe it would be massively beneficial to
indicate which packages/distributions rely on ie X-Windows (or other
programs) during the selection process so we can avoid this mess. (In
the latest case I have a feeling it was my unfortunate selection of
"gtop" or "gnutop", which I assumed was just a GNU top command, but I
think it installed tons of Gnome and other GUI stuff too) (WISHLIST)
It seems to me that most of the data necessary to provide the above
info to sysinstall is already in the packages themselves, certainly
the dependencies. Perhaps the actual disk usage numbers aren't
there, but maybe that's where I can help. I'm thinking perhaps what
is needed is some type of secretarial work to compile a database, or
perhaps a standard-formatted data file accompanying each package or
distribution which contains the diskspace usage for each package once
it's installed. (which can be summed with each of the figures for
each dependency, assuming they are not yet installed, to provide a
total) Since the sysinstall distributions/pre-packaged software
install process seems to be only related to a particular full
RELEASE, would this recordkeeping only need to be done for each full
release?
Assuming I'm willing to do a lot of the legwork and recordkeeping
necessary, is this idea remotely interesting or am I just spewing
newbie-trash?
Best,
Phil
--
Philip J. Koenig pjklist@ekahuna.com
Electric Kahuna Systems -- Computers & Communications for the New Millenium
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