From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 29 08:17:34 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA04089 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 29 Jul 1996 08:17:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from apollo.it.hq.nasa.gov (apollo.it.hq.nasa.gov [131.182.119.87]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id IAA04084 for ; Mon, 29 Jul 1996 08:17:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wirehead.it.hq.nasa.gov (wirehead.it.hq.nasa.gov [131.182.119.88]) by apollo.it.hq.nasa.gov (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id PAA27337 for ; Mon, 29 Jul 1996 15:17:41 GMT Received: from localhost (cshenton@localhost) by wirehead.it.hq.nasa.gov (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id PAA01486 for ; Mon, 29 Jul 1996 15:15:39 GMT Message-Id: <199607291515.PAA01486@wirehead.it.hq.nasa.gov> X-Authentication-Warning: wirehead.it.hq.nasa.gov: cshenton owned process doing -bs X-Authentication-Warning: wirehead.it.hq.nasa.gov: Host localhost didn't use HELO protocol To: hackers@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: 2.1.5R sysinstall comments In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 26 Jul 1996 15:38:49 -0700 (PDT)" References: <199607262238.PAA11270@freefall.freebsd.org> X-Mailer: Mew version 1.03 on Emacs 19.31.3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 11:15:39 -0400 From: Chris Shenton Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I recently installed 2.1.5R -- twice, but that's another story -- on a machine and had a couple comments/suggestions. I like some of the new features, especially the status at the bottom of what packages its getting and the transfer rate. MULTI-USER SYSINSTALL DISK/PARTITION PROBLEM: The second time I installed, it was because my first disk appeared to be getting corrupted. So I installed a second SCSI drive along with the first and ran sysinstall from multiuser. Answered the questions, and told it to label the partitions, which generated a core dump. Tried again and didn't label them, did the COMMIT, and it started downloading, but installing it on my currently-running disk in /, /usr, etc, blowing away perfectly good copies of stuff like sh! I tried again, labeling the partitions /new, /new/usr, /net/var on sd1 but it did the same thing. Finally, I downloaded the boot.flp, pulled the running drive out so it could only write to the new drive. RESTART WANTED: While downloading, my !#$@ing ISP dropped my PPP link. The download failed. I had to start from ground-zero. This is really painful at 28.8. It would be really cool if you could say "RESTART" on some menu, and it would examine what was already fetched versus what you wanted installed, and pickup from where it left off. Perhaps retrieval by sup would be a good thing. SAVED INSTALL CONFIG WANTED: I'd really like it if when you say COMMIT, it wrote a little config file to disk which said what partitions were where, what the network config parameters were, what packages were requested for installation. This way, if the install fails, you can start over (or restart!) without having to go through all the specifications again. PORTS CD/DIR CONFUSED, NO CANCEL OPTION: After sysinstalling, one of the menus asks if I want to install some ports. I said yes, and it told me that I need to insert CDROM-2; kinda difficult when I'm installing over PPP :-). I hit CONTINUE, cuz that's the only choice it gives me (*everything* should have a CANCEL option which backs you out), and it then talks to the ftpN.freebsd.org server, fails, and repeats its demands for the CD. After a couple iterations, it appears to give up, demands CDROM-1 this time, connects, fails, and eventually leads me back to the main sysinstall menu. Fortunately. Not sure why it isn't aware that I'm installing from ftp, not CD. It does go to the net to do something, but looks like maybe it wasn't finding the proper ports directly -- not sure. If I'm confused, let me know. Otherwise, I think this went pretty well and is an improvement over previous versions. PS: why don't you change the name of "boot4.flp" to "boot4mb.flp" to make it more obvious? just a suggestion.