From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 9 20:31:20 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from smtp10.phx.gblx.net (smtp10.phx.gblx.net [64.211.219.59]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68B4B37B401 for ; Mon, 9 Jul 2001 20:31:14 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr01.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp10.phx.gblx.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id UAA34554; Mon, 9 Jul 2001 20:31:13 -0700 Received: from usr01.primenet.com(206.165.6.201) via SMTP by smtp10.phx.gblx.net, id smtpdyp4BUa; Mon Jul 9 20:31:09 2001 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr01.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA13663; Mon, 9 Jul 2001 20:32:19 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200107100332.UAA13663@usr01.primenet.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral To: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 03:32:14 +0000 (GMT) Cc: wmoran@iowna.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG ] Terry Lambert writes: ] ] > The base system is not registered into the packages ] > system, because of sysinstall. ] ] It's not installed from /usr/ports but from /usr/src. ] I don't know if it's a good idea to have a huge ] freebsd_base-5.0-current-20010624 in the packages list, or a zillion ] freebsd_base-bin, freebsd_base-etc, etc. installed. The problem is that without such registration, it's not possible to incrementally upgrade only those things which have changed between one distribution and another. The most aggregious problems are kernel structure changes, since there is no reverse dependency listing to tell you what you need to replace when you rebuild the kernel. The infamous "proc size mismatch" is one symptom of this, but really anything which links against libkvm is at risk.. ] > The disk partitioning sucks. ] ] This has worked for me without any problems, but you must have met ] some to say that it sucks. Can you elaborate on this, instead of ] throwing a plain 'sucks' and hoping that we agree with you? When you are doing an upgrade, and go into the partition editor, it has sticky state. If you do the natural thing, which is to immediately mark "NO!" on the newfs, then fill out the partition names, it does the wrong thing, and offers to newfs your disks for you ("Are you sure?"). This has caught a number of people I am aware of. It's also incapable of resizing partitions (basically, doing what "Partition Magic" can do). There's a distribution that comes with "Partition Magic", but you have to run it under Windows. ] > The upgrade process should automatically discover the ] > FS mount points. ] ] Yep. Nice idea. Can we have a patch, please? Will you commit it? It's pretty trivial: just read the "last mounted on" field from the superblock. If you'll commit it, I'll provide it. ] > It's too "chatty". ] ] And this is too terse a complaint to have any meaning whatsoever. It wants me to enter information that it could figure out, if it were just willing to do a little work. And it does not close the windows near the end. ] > The network setup should attempt to obtain a DHCP lease, ] > without having to be told to do it, at least for initial ] > install. ] ] No, please don't. ] I don't want sysinstall trying to play `smart' behind my back. If you pick "default installation" or "full installation", it _should_ try to be smart; if you pick "custom installation", you chould have to babysit it like you do today. In the "default" case, it should attempt to obtain a DHCP lease, and, failing that, ask the user to give it settings, or let them do IPv4 stateless autoconfiguration. Ad Hoc networking should always "just work". ] > X11 is a distribution set, instead of a package. ] ] But... but... I did install only those parts of X11 that I wanted. ] I'm not sure I understand this claim. It's on the CDROM as a distribution set, instead of being a package. This means that there is a special build process involved in getting it onto the CDROM image: a build process not covered under "make release". X11 is one of those things that needs to change when kernel structures are changed. It is very hard to reproduce a given distribution using only the tags for the distribution from the source tree. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message