From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 14 18:26:44 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 99A09106566B; Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:26:44 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nwhitehorn@freebsd.org) Received: from mail.icecube.wisc.edu (trout.icecube.wisc.edu [128.104.255.119]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5DBB18FC0C; Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:26:44 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by mail.icecube.wisc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 84B315811D; Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:26:43 -0600 (CST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at icecube.wisc.edu Received: from mail.icecube.wisc.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (trout.icecube.wisc.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10030) with ESMTP id a711Llp8EjuG; Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:26:43 -0600 (CST) Received: from wanderer.tachypleus.net (i3-dhcp-172-16-223-131.icecube.wisc.edu [172.16.223.131]) by mail.icecube.wisc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5A6C35811A; Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:26:43 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <4D309563.1000404@freebsd.org> Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:26:43 -0600 From: Nathan Whitehorn User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101227 Thunderbird/3.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org, freebsd-current Current Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.org Subject: BSDInstall: merging to HEAD X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 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: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:26:44 -0000 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. -Nathan