Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2010 23:16:20 -0500 From: Josh Paetzel <jpaetzel@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: txt-sysinstall scrapped Message-ID: <201011052316.27839.jpaetzel@freebsd.org>
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--nextPart1757189.nHTtOFvdDe Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable It's been incredibly busy for us in iXsystems land, with a lot of irons in = the=20 fire. One of the many things we've been working on is a new installer. Several=20 months ago pc-sysinstall was imported into HEAD from the PC-BSD project. =20 pc-sysinstall is a fine tool, and very useful as the backend for doing=20 scripted installs. If you're using scripted sysinstall I recommend you che= ck=20 it out, it's a lot easier to use and configure than sysinstall, the=20 documentation is much better, and reasonable requests for functionality can= =20 and will be brought in. This is all fine and good, but without a front end to generate the config=20 files pc-sysinstall needs it's not much use to an end user for doing instal= ls. =20 We (and by we I mean the forces at iXsystems) have been working on txt- sysinstall, which is a front end for pc-sysinstall using curses and dialog = to=20 generate a pc-sysinstall config file from user input. What we've encounter= ed=20 is that doing disk configuration in dialog isn't possible, and we started d= own=20 the road of using curses....but we already have a curses and dialog based=20 installer, and wouldn't it be neat if we could use the disk configuration t= ool=20 we are writing for FreeNAS, too bad it's a web app..... But if the installer just launched a web server..... Ok, wait a minute, that couldn't work...how would you configure networking?= =20 Oh wait, that's already solved in FreeNAS, before you access the system you= =20 use a console/CLI app to configure the network. Ok, but people do installs= =20 over serial ports....oh wait, you could run lynx from the console too... We quickly realized that the objections we could come up with were easily=20 overcome, and the more we talked to people here at MeetBSD the more we=20 realized it was a viable (and good) idea. People quickly came up with=20 improvements. This gets us the best of both worlds. Want a super fancy GUI installer, ju= st=20 hit the box with firefox or whatever from a full desktop, want a text=20 interface that's simple, need low bandwidth, running over a serial port, us= e=20 the embedded lynx browser. Installing in a remote vm/cloud, just configure= =20 the ip and hit it with a browser (yes, we're dreaming up ways to do it over= =20 ssl and such) I'll do a better write-up very soon, I'm pretty tired now and have a long=20 weekend looming, but just wanted to get the word out. Just to give credit where credit is due, this all started with Warner Losh= =20 saying, "Can you listen to a crazy idea I had?" It didn't take long to=20 realize that it wasn't crazy, it was a stroke of genius. Secondary props go to Philip Paeps and Kris Moore for implementation detail= s,=20 Matt Olander for recognizing the benefits and approving the change in focus= ,=20 John Hixson for the priceless look on his face when he realized we were=20 serious about changing (He's done the bulk of the work on txt-sysinstall) t= he=20 random NetBSD user here at MeetBSD (sorry I don't know his name) who said i= t=20 was a horrible idea because it would "bloat the installer way too much" (I'= m=20 still laughing at that, he was saying something about floppies too, I guess= =20 we're locking out people using 386's or something.) and quite a few other=20 people who are too countless to mention but offered random advice or=20 encouragement. =20 =2D-=20 Thanks, Josh Paetzel =46reeBSD -- The power to serve --nextPart1757189.nHTtOFvdDe Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.15 (FreeBSD) iQEcBAABAgAGBQJM1NabAAoJEKFq1/n1feG2h/8IAI0kw8IGHlXTfedqkykpWzhp 28RLWzjebeq72cEVGoIT4ptdBfu5GXeqgZJeCHyyskUNSeRbxQmtWdV2Ue4AITeX GiV0lS4ev3ZV3c9EvC8LYQzSnr8lkxB/Le0gJXtJRU4XYT3sAdcqsAyM3vIilYYk 1C5iIapikEjpEiFDGon8dGPaaNo0uhHWCn7/hrnoUA25KFWH7JeBTCb518TYlJ1u 1yqf/W5XroAvkoTUdOOkdsL1WlDSmun7e7IXAOk1J4dAWA+IyffK4Pzav5939ynK cDJioVCGhlKsV81JUJV7xDBqxQ7L6A+9CsPyvQyk0hWONeB63annF458YVg9RwU= =RxS+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart1757189.nHTtOFvdDe--
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