Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 17:46:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Julian Elischer <julian@ref.tfs.com> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: [On the new Install] Message-ID: <199505310046.RAA21178@ref.tfs.com>
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Ok, I've tried out the new install first impression: not bad at all. things that didn't appear obvious, etc.: when slicing and dicing^H^H^H^H^H^H^H partitionning, there was no comforting little "Commit this to disk NOW" option on any of the menues.. I'm still not totally sure when the new disklabel and mbr are written to disk, but assume it's later... if so it should be written somewhere that this is the case.. (on each screen affected.. e.g. "These changes will only be written to disk when you select to proceed with the install (and answer the "really mean it" question." When selecting 'Geometry' (G) it would be nice if the 3 fields were individually enterable, in such a way that total records was a multple of the 3, and setting heads and sectors would set the correct 'cyls' for the correct total size, and then over-riding that cyls would produce a corrected 'total sectors'. working ut how mant tracks you have is a pain when switching geometries, and a likely point of human error.. Many screens (e.g. setting up netowrk stuff and intallation type) have simply EXIT and QUIT as their two bottom entries, yet you can't get to EXIT.. it you hit return when EXIT appears selected, you instead select one of the entries above it.. using upand down arrow will not go to the EXIT entry. This leaves the user in some doubt as to whether his selection has been accepted, as the only way to get out of the screen is through QUIT which intuitively suggests (to me at least) abandonning any changed fields. (example of above.... the X11 selection sreens need an 'accept' entry, EXIT doesn't work...) but quit seems to select what you want. (it's all a little confusing) There is no way to get those last N blocks (not a whole 'cylinder') into a slice (particularly the BSD slice, at least not without doing mental arithmetic.. (once again prone to pilot error)). there is no comment that the VT4 shell is CHROOT'ed to the hd.. this should be made plain... it toke me about 5 minutes to figure out why I couldn't get to /mnt when I could see it in 'mount' :) We know all the names for various SLICE types so why not print them... I have the impression that I may have had a hard time if I'd wanted to do something a little less normal. I still couldn't directly edit fdisk of disklabel entries which is something I think is important for non-standard installs.. I also didn't see how one could do a 'partial re-install' if one had a partly corrupted FS, and wanted to just download again, without newfsing everything... julian
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