From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 29 18:21:29 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 85E17106567C; Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:21:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jhb@freebsd.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [65.122.17.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 452A98FC25; Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:21:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bigwig.baldwin.cx (bigwig.baldwin.cx [96.47.65.170]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id C058346B1A; Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:21:28 -0500 (EST) Received: from jhbbsd.localnet (unknown [209.249.190.124]) by bigwig.baldwin.cx (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 5822BB91E; Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:21:28 -0500 (EST) From: John Baldwin To: Nathan Whitehorn Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:04:00 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.13.5 (FreeBSD/8.2-CBSD-20110714-p8; KDE/4.5.5; amd64; ; ) References: <4EF904F2.4020109@FreeBSD.org> <201112290952.06834.jhb@freebsd.org> <4EFC9745.3050901@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <4EFC9745.3050901@freebsd.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <201112291204.01019.jhb@freebsd.org> X-Greylist: Sender succeeded SMTP AUTH, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.7 (bigwig.baldwin.cx); Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:21:28 -0500 (EST) Cc: Lawrence Stewart , freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Ron McDowell , Doug Barton Subject: Re: Removal of sysinstall from HEAD and lack of a post-install configuration tool 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: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:21:29 -0000 On Thursday, December 29, 2011 11:37:25 am Nathan Whitehorn wrote: > On 12/29/11 06:52, John Baldwin wrote: > > On Tuesday, December 27, 2011 9:32:52 pm Lawrence Stewart wrote: > >> On 12/28/11 06:29, Doug Barton wrote: > >>> On 12/27/2011 03:48, Lawrence Stewart wrote: > >>>> On the topic of Doug's actual question, I see minimal sense in > >>>> resurrecting sysinstall in head now. I would suggest it be done much > >>>> closer to (say, 6 months before) the 10.0 release cycle, if no suitable > >>>> post-installation configuration tool has materialised. > >>> > >>> My concern about that approach is that 9.0 hasn't even been released yet > >>> and we've already seen changes that are going to make it hard to > >>> resurrect sysinstall if that's the decision we come to. Waiting another > >>> year or 2 would make it impossible. > >> > >> Which changes are you referring to? I would have thought a reverse merge > >> to undo the deletion of the sysinstall and old libdialog sources would > >> be very minimal work. We'd also probably need a few extra build system > >> changes to make sure old libdialog is perhaps statically compiled into > >> sysinstall as it would be the only in-tree consumer, but that's not hard > >> either. I may be lacking some imagination, but don't really see why it > >> would become harder the longer we wait. > > > > I think Doug is worried that the list will just get longer, and I agree. > > Bits rot faster once they aren't part of the build. It is easy to delete > > sysinstall or trim it, it is not easy to resurrect it. Personally, the one > > time I used bsdinstall recently I found it to be a bit uneven, and not really > > a step forward for a new user compared to the "standard" install mode of > > sysinstall. It's biggest win is it's ability to do more disk configurations, > > but it seemed less user-friendly in almost every other regard (and even the > > disk editor seemd less user-friendly even if it had more functionality). > > > > I'd appreciate any specific comments you might have, and especially > specific suggestions for improvements. Except from people who are old > hands at sysinstall, I've received almost universally positive comments > on the user experience. Patches would be even more appreciated, since > real life has intervened to steal most of my FreeBSD time. A way to select from available partition types (UFS, boot, swap, ZFS, etc.) rather than requiring the user to remember the 'freebsd-xxx' string would be one improvement. At the time I was more worried about getting my box up and running than taking detailed notes. :) The lack of a /compat link is another issue people have raised. The lack of a shell running on ttyv3 during the install is probably a feature I think many "advanced" users would miss. I missed having the debug output on ttyv1 as well. At work here it would be a deal-killer for my sysadmins to not have ttyv3. We use a custom installer for our boxes that I wrote as a shell script and it still does debug/verbose output on ttyv1. It doesn't start an explicit shell on ttyv3, but I have a login prompt there that they can use and I've thought about even replacing that with an explicit chroot'd shell ala sysinstall. I can't count the number of times I've used the shell on ttyv3 during installs. For new users the ability to browse the packages, etc. I think is important. It certainly was for me back when I first installed FreeBSD back in college. I don't recall seeing that option during the one install I did of 9. -- John Baldwin