Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 03:32:14 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr Cc: wmoran@iowna.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral Message-ID: <200107100332.UAA13663@usr01.primenet.com>
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] Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> 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.
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