Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 23:21:00 +0200 From: Michel Talon <talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sysinstall is still inadequate after all of these years Message-ID: <20080703212100.GA16598@lpthe.jussieu.fr>
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Doug Barton wrote: > Mike Makonnen has some very interesting ideas on this topic: > http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2007-December/081400.html > > FWIW, I think that there are 3 basic requirements for a new installer: > > 1. It should be library-based and therefore be capable of supporting > at least a few different UIs (see above). > 2. At least one of those UIs should be functional over a standard > serial console. > 3. It should be scriptable I agree completely with these comments. Much less with the argument of Mike Makonnen, to the point that using a scripting language in the front end (lua for the bsdinstaller) is bad. Using a sensible scripting language (python, lua, something simple and readable) would ensure that a lot of people can contribute effectively and that the program can evolve easily. The argument that there sould be no external dependency seems to me inspired by the NIH syndrom. Important points would be to solve the long standing problems with sysinstall internal fdisk and disklabel program: namely the bogus geometry problems with fdisk and the 16 sectors offset for partition a. A bonus would be support for "alien" partitioning such as extended partitions. An other very important problem would be to support modern FreeBSD, such as "virtual" devices created by GEOM, etc. As other people mentioned there are inconsistencies in the use of keyboard keys, and scripted installs are very poor, compared for example to RedHat anaconda. Personnally i like a curses interface, like the one of sysinstall, but a simple shell script like in OpenBSD could also do the job for the minimalist people, while a graphical installer running on top of a live CD, like in many Linux distributions, Ubuntu, etc. could be envisioned. The DragonFlyBSD installer runs on top of a live CD, this is the easiest way to have a full featured installer, but this requires a machine with sufficient RAM. Anyways all those possibilities point to the soundness of your propositions 1) and 2). -- Michel TALON
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