From owner-freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 26 16:50:22 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C2A9F106566B for ; Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:50:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from james@mansionfamily.plus.com) Received: from relay.pcl-ipout02.plus.net (relay.pcl-ipout02.plus.net [212.159.7.100]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C3158FC1C for ; Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:50:21 +0000 (UTC) Received: from avasout02.plus.net ([212.159.14.17]) by relay.pcl-ipout02.plus.net with ESMTP; 26 Oct 2011 17:21:01 +0100 Received: from server.barnhouse ([80.229.150.39]) by avasout02.plus.net with smtp id pUM01h0040rF08o01UM1Rk; Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:21:01 +0100 X-CM-Score: 0.00 X-CNFS-Analysis: v=2.0 cv=GPiK45xK c=1 sm=1 a=KcaHU+F0vwy42TIp8RsFnw==:17 a=yAP4_T4JbDAA:10 a=wLNUC47kYTMA:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=ceKTTlTXTvozYpDotyYA:9 a=MqrrAY8hqsllHwFeaiIA:7 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=KcaHU+F0vwy42TIp8RsFnw==:117 Received: from [192.168.0.132] (James-PC.barnhouse [192.168.0.132]) by server.barnhouse (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38BC568204D for ; Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:21:07 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: <4EA83368.1050603@mansionfamily.plus.com> Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:20:56 +0100 From: james User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20110929 Thunderbird/7.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Experiences with 9.0-rc1 installer, small home NAS/fileserver. X-BeenThere: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: james@mansionfamily.plus.com List-Id: Bug reports List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:50:22 -0000 Not sure this is the best place to give feedback Tho I'm certainly going to complain. Bit random, notes as I go (from about half-way through a frustrating day anyway) The system: AMD E350 mobo, 4off 2GB drives I want to use in ZFS RAIDZ, and an SSD on SATA5 I want to use for boot/zil/l2arc. CD is USB external. Boot ends: cd0: cd present [... records] Mounting from cd9660:/dev/iso9660/FREEBSD_INSTALL failed with error 19. Loader variables vfs.root.mountfrom=cd9660:/dev/iso9660/FREEBSD_INSTALL vfs.root.mountfrom.options=ro Then it asks for manual root specification. At this point: cd9660:/dev/cd0 *does* work Now, what I'd like to do is to use the SSD (ada4) for boot, 2Gb ZIL, 30GB L2ARC. This is NOT straightforward, it seems, and I found the system less easy to use than sysinstall. Worse, I was able to run sysinstall from the live cd, and to partition and slice the disk as I wanted - but I couldn't convince it to load the distribution sets using either 'CD/DVD' or 'existing filesystem'. Now, I thought I'd managed to get sysinstall to partition it and create a bunch of slices, but next time into the new installer it seemed not. Odd. Anyway, it seems very hard to get the new installer to create an ada4s1a type slice - I ended up with GPT ada4p1 to ada4p5 where p4 is 2G with no moint and p5 is 30G with no moint point. Not a very happy experience. The old sysinstall fdisk and label screens were more usable in my view (and I'm only an occassional FreeBSD user - I'm trying this because Illumos doesn't handle the LAN chip on this mobo), and what is there now is neither 'the same but better' nor 'more like you get in Linux'. Full marks for trying to allow GPT/DOS/BSD type partitioning, but it was very frustrating in practice. In particular, if you're going to provide sysinstall so we can just go to live CD and fire it up - please make it work! I got to a point where I have ada4 with GPT table, p1 to p4 defined, 32GB free. If I go 'Create' and change the type to 'freebsd' (ie delete '-ufs' because I'm not going to mount it - I'm going to use it as L2ARC) then I don't get ada4p5 - I get ada4s5 and type is BSD. Now if I go 'Modify' on ada4s5 then I get an error popup 'Invalid argument: arg0 'ada4s5'). I can create ada4p5 as 'freebsd-ufs' with no mount point. There's no hint which type strings are valid, and I was able to use 'freebsd' if I create as 'freebsd-ufs' and then 'modify' and remove '-ufs'. Ideally, of course, there would be: - some help about what strings are OK - options for 'raw', and perhaps some ZFS-related things too (zpool device, cache, log) if it doesn't make sense to create as raw. Having said all that, when the installer works OK and does what you want, then its pretty quick. Other nits: * if I set a UK keyboard, then probably I want Europe/United Kingdom as the default timezone. * the boot screen daemon has no face features! At least its installed now, and uses a pleasingly small amount of RAM. prior to creating a zpool, anyhow. James