Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 03:14:22 -0800 From: Garrett Cooper <gcooper@FreeBSD.org> To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Marius_N=FCnnerich?= <marius@nuenneri.ch> Cc: freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSDInstall: merging to HEAD Message-ID: <AANLkTi=z%2BFNP5F2fAhzMHvQ7YO%2BE8LNWS475HNqoDoG_@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <AANLkTim0WTBBD%2B-oBtq0t_hA2B2hDUza6WOAy22xvGY5@mail.gmail.com> References: <4D309563.1000404@freebsd.org> <AANLkTinUwzFK7p1FNhX4DtNYcHdyzDzZ=Wiu9XGPw7jk@mail.gmail.com> <4D336BFC.1020004@freebsd.org> <AANLkTim0WTBBD%2B-oBtq0t_hA2B2hDUza6WOAy22xvGY5@mail.gmail.com>
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On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 2:42 AM, Marius N=FCnnerich <marius@nuenneri.ch> wr= ote: > On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 23:06, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> = wrote: >> On 01/16/11 10:34, Marius N=FCnnerich wrote: >>> >>> On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 19:26, Nathan Whitehorn<nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> >>> =A0wrote: >>>> >>>> As those of you who have been reading freebsd-sysinstall and freebsd-a= rch >>>> know, I have been working for a few weeks on a lightweight new install= er >>>> named 'bsdinstall'. This is designed to replace sysinstall for the 9.0 >>>> release. >>>> >>>> After two weeks of testing and bug fixes on the sysinstall list, I >>>> believe >>>> this now has all required functionality and is ready to be merged into >>>> the >>>> main source tree. I would like to do this on Tuesday, 18 January. >>>> Switching >>>> this to be the default installer would happen a few weeks after that, >>>> pending discussion on release formats with the release engineering tea= m. >>>> This should provide a sufficient testing period before 9.0 and allow a >>>> maximal number of bugs to be discovered and solved before the release = is >>>> shipped. >>>> >>>> Demo ISO for i386: >>>> http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/bsdinstall-i386-20110114.iso.bz2 >>>> SVN repository: svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/nwhitehorn/bsdinstall >>>> Wiki page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/BSDInstall >>>> >>>> Goals >>>> ----- >>>> The primary goal of BSDInstall is to provide an easily extensible >>>> installer >>>> without the limitations of sysinstall, in order to allow more modern >>>> installations of FreeBSD. This means that it should have additional >>>> features >>>> to support modern setups, but simultaneously frees us to remove >>>> complicating >>>> features of sysinstall like making sure everything fits in floppy >>>> disk-sized >>>> chunks. >>>> >>>> New Features: >>>> - Allows installation onto GPT disks on x86 systems >>>> - Can do installations spanning multiple disks >>>> - Allows installation into jails >>>> - Eases PXE installation >>>> - Virtualization friendly: can install from a live system onto disk >>>> =A0images >>>> - Works on PowerPC >>>> - Streamlined system installation >>>> - More flexible scripting >>>> - Easily tweakable >>>> - All install CDs are live CDs >>>> >>>> Architecture >>>> ------------ >>>> BSDInstall is a set of tools that are called in sequence by a master >>>> script. >>>> These tools are, for example, the partition editor, the thing that >>>> fetches >>>> the distributions from the network, the thing that untars them, etc. >>>> Since >>>> these are just called in sequence from a shell script, a scripted >>>> installation can easily replace them with other things, (e.g. hard-cod= ed >>>> gpart commands), leave steps out, add new ones, or interleave addition= al >>>> system modifications. >>>> >>>> Status >>>> ------ >>>> This provides functionality most similar to the existing sysinstall >>>> 'Express' track. It installs working, bootable systems you can ssh int= o >>>> immediately after reboot on i386, amd64, sparc64, powerpc, and powerpc= 64. >>>> There is untested support for pc98. The final architecture on which we >>>> use >>>> sysinstall, ia64, is currently unsupported, because I don't know how t= o >>>> set >>>> up booting on those systems -- patches to solve this are very much >>>> welcome. >>>> >>>> There are still some missing features that I would like to see in the >>>> release, but these do not significantly impact the functionality of th= e >>>> installer. Some will be addressed before merging to HEAD, in particula= r >>>> the >>>> lack of a man page for bsdinstall. Others, like configuration of wirel= ess >>>> networking and ZFS installation, can happen between merge and release. >>>> The >>>> test ISOs are also lacking a ports tree at the moment, which is a >>>> statement >>>> about the slow upload speed of my DSL line and not about the final lay= out >>>> of >>>> releases. >>>> >>>> Please send any questions, comments, or patches you may have, and plea= se >>>> be >>>> aware when replying that this email has been cross-posted to three lis= ts. >>>> Technical discussion (bug reports, for instance) should be directed to >>>> the >>>> freebsd-sysinstall list only. Most other discussion belongs on >>>> -sysinstall >>>> and -current. >>>> -Nathan >>> >>> Clean new virtualbox on FreeBSD host. >>> >>> Install -> =A0German ISO-8859-1 -> =A0"vbox" -> =A0Guided -> =A0ad0 -> = =A0Partition >>> -> =A0"You have canceled an installation step" >>> >>> Actually I didn't cancel anything :) >> >> That is fixed now. Thanks for the report! > > Thanks! > >>> After using the entire disk and installing some distributions it hangs >>> waiting for the root password, it won't continue when I just press >>> enter. >> >> I can't reproduce this. What happens if you press control-C? > > No reponse to Control-C. Maybe this happens only when the first thing > happened I described? > So trying to partion -> "canceled" -> use entire disk. > Or maybe it's related to the libdialog bug, when I couldn't enter a > root pw the carriage returns where missing. > >> >>> The screen output looks garbled by a LOR. The screen waiting for the >>> root pw is garbled too. Seems like it's not doing a carriage return, >>> just line-feeds. I tried this again a second time and everything >>> worked normally. >> >> The LORs are from the UFS system. Since this is a 9.0-CURRENT snapshot, >> WITNESS is on in the install kernel. The carriage return issue may be >> related to a bug Garrett Cooper found in libdialog which will hopefully = be >> fixed before too long. > > Nice :) There are a couple of usability bugs. The ones I've seen so far are: 1. Generating signals while the dialog is being drawn can leave the terminal in a funky state (new libdialog supports mouse input .. there were a few instances I ran into where mouse input mode remained active in my terminal after the libdialog modal died). Calling reset (if possible) should fix things. 2. The old libdialog properly cleared the screen down to the next line when end_dialog was called. The new one doesn't. If we put printf("\n"); before fflush(stdout); in end_dialog that should get us by for the time being as a stopgap (untested, but I did equivalent in tzsetup port in progress). 3. Window resizing doesn't function 100%. The contents in the modals don't redraw properly if you resize the window. Window resizing is broken in the old libdialog to some degree though. Unsetting $COLUMNS and $LINES might help (that's what the maintainer claimed about Debian as he saw similar breakage there). 4. Some other random small usability bugs exist. I've only scratched the surface, but I've opened up rapport with the maintainer, so fixing these issues shouldn't be too painful. I will document these issues on a FreeBSD wiki page if desired. Thanks! -Garrett
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