Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 12:59:57 -0400 (EDT) From: "Adrian T. Filipi-Martin" <atf3r@server.cs.virginia.edu> To: FreeBSD Hackers List <hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: 2.0.5 comments/feedback Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.90.950610113534.5073A-100000@stretch.cs.Virginia.edu>
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Hi folks, Great job! Some of the improvements are quite stunning. However, there are a few things that could be improved. Some of these might qualify as bugs, but the majority of this post is a list of suggestions for improvements. Hence, sending it to this list. VERSION: 2.0.5-ALPHA, install floppies from 6/3/95 8am. 1. Souldn't there also be a 'clear bootable' option when partitioning you disk geometries? Because the contests fo the flags column seemed to change unpredictably at times, I could not tell whether, selecting the 'use all' option set this flag. If it does, then it would be simple to say 'use all' and 'clear bootable' to make a single partition on a non-boot disk. Perhaps a 'toggle bootable' option would be best. 2. As I memtioned above, the contents of the 'flags' column are unclear. While the values on disk as numbers/bit fields, it may be better to only show the flag symbolically. Upon using one of the updated floppy sets, I did see an 'A' fairly consistently, but meaning the other characters were not clear. Perhaps a legend for the partition editor would be a good idea. 3. The button and key usage of the install menus are inconsistent and almost contradictory at points. I did see the improvement in the X submenus, but there are still problems. First, I think that a single meaning should be bound tightly to a single key and the redundant options removed. The one redundant one is the ESC key for getting a shell. Given that you get a shell on ttyv3 pretty early and I could find nothing helpful to do in the 'ESC shell' until the root floppy was mounted and the ttyv3 shell already existed, I think it could be eliminated without loss. With respect to the SPACE and the RETURN keys, there are also problems. In some places SPACE toggles setting; In others, it advances to another menu. This seems to encroach upon the use of RETURN. Also the CANCEL option to signify that you ar done with a menu is rather unclear. I think the best solution here would be to provide a notion of forward and backward directions when navigating configuration menus. Under this scheme, CANCLE would back up to the previous menu and 'OK' would be replaced with 'CONTINUE'. If both buttons would result in returning to the same menu (e.g. the X 'font menu'), then one keeps the user's settings and the other forgetts them. The use of SPACE to toggle itmes is perfectly acceptible, so its other manigs should be shifted. However, it might be clearer instead to eliminate its use, and provide a 'SELECT' button when necessary and have it highlighted by default when entering a new menu. 4. Sysinstall should be made safe to run at a later point to add uninstalled distributions. After several retries, I got tired of installing the full distribution. After getting up and running with the minumal distribution, I used sysinstall to install the rest. This turns out to be a problem for a couple of reasons. First, sysinstall re-extracts the root filesystem over my customized one. This blew away many of my /etc files! Second, I do not think it is appropriate to always reset the scsi devices upon start up. It stopped a playig cd in a cdrom that I did not intend to use for installing and it rewound a tape that I had advanced for the purposes of installing. Third, it might be a good idea to show where sysinstall will extract a tape archive and what path it will use to find the distributions, then allow the latter to be edited to compensate ofr any added paths in the tar. The defaults did not work for me, and I had to install from UFS and use the fact that the install would pause with a message about not finding the distribution as an opportunity to untar it and set up the path correctly. Specifically, I used 'get 2.0.5-ALPHA.tar |"dd of=/dev/nrst0 obs=20b"' to make my archive. This includes 2.0.5-ALPHA in the path. I would have needed a lot of local temporary storage to make my tape without this path on it. 5. While I let FreeBSD determin the geometries to use which seemed reasonable, I still got warning messages about calculated and label geometries disagreeing. (I actually recall seing this with 2.0 when doing a 'disklabel -r'.) Is there something wrong here or are the error/warnign messages temselves the problem? 6. I got a message about 'resolv.conf' not being configured, but never saw any opportunity to configure this file. 7. Complains about not being able to extract srelease.ab. srelease.aa appears to be complete, so this is probably a problem with the packing list. 8. While it is great to be able to switch back and forth bewteen ttyv0 and ttyv1 during installation, it would be nice if all messages to ttyv0 were echoed to ttyv1. Unless it is actually quiet enough ot hear my disk stop, I find myself wondering what is happening and toggling back and forth many times. 9. If you boot without a tape in the tape drive, sysinstall doe not belive you have one. I does recognise the drive during boot, and it is useable froma shell, so this problem is particular to sysinstall. 10. ttyv0 is blank when extracting the distribution from tape. It would be better if there was nominally a message saying 'now is a good time for a coffee break.' 11. Similarly, when breaking out of sysinstall and the system is halting, the 'system halted, press any key' message does not appear unless I flip back and forth between another tty. Otherwise it behaves correctly. 12. After repeatedly bouncing around the sysinstall menu system, I started gettign 'disk full' messages. I see that a MFS is used, so I can see why the space is limited. I suspect either temporary files are collecting when I cancel from certain menus, or that the sysinstall.debug file was growing large. 13. At ties the progress indicator bar extends past the right hand side of the box. Otherwise really cool. :-) 14. Whether the final message after extraction say I succedded or failed seems to be irrelavent to whehter any errors were encountered. 15. It would be better if the labels for the BootEasy menu could be specified by the installer. 'BSD' is too generic. I could easily have multiple BSD'spp. 16. The interface for slip is not cuaa0, but sl0, Yet, cuaa0 finds its way into sysconfig. 17. /etc/netstart should be run after 'rm var/run/*' in /etc/rc. This is necessary because slattach.*.pid gets blown away almost immediately. cheers, Adrian adrian@virginia.edu ---->>>>| Support your local programmer, http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~atf3r/ --->>>| STOP Software Patent Abuses NOW! Member: The League for -->>| info at ftp.uu.net:/doc/lpf, print Programming Freedom ->| "join.ps.Z" for an application
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