Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 09:28:30 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> To: Lothar Braun <lothar@lobraun.de> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sysinstall is still inadequate after all of these years Message-ID: <20080703092511.T69986@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <486C8700.5020100@lobraun.de> References: <784966050807021123l267aa20en39eb513c12c90ad2@mail.gmail.com> <20080702235800.H47773@fledge.watson.org> <486C8700.5020100@lobraun.de>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, 3 Jul 2008, Lothar Braun wrote: > Robert Watson wrote: > >> My primary concern about some of these replacement installer projects is >> that they've placed a strong focus on making them graphical -- I actually >> couldn't care less about GUIs (and I think they actually hurt my >> configurations, since I use serial consoles a lot), but what I do want is a >> very tight and efficient install process, which I feel sysinstall does >> badly on (not just for the reasons you specify). > > Hmm, how should a tight and efficient installation process look like in your > opinion? And what are the other points that are bad in systinstall? For me, it's really about minimizing the time to get to a generic install from a CD or DVD. Most of the time, I don't do a lot of customization during the install -- I configure machines using DHCP, I add most packages later, and I tend to use default disk layouts since my servers don't multi-boot and the defaults currently seem "reasonable". I don't like being asked many more questions than whether or not to enable sshd, and what to set the root password to. This means that I find our current distributions menu a bit inefficient (I don't want sub-menus, I just want checkboxes), and that the inconsistency in the handling of the space/enter/tab/cursor keys across different libdialog interfaces in the install is awkward. The current generic and express installs seem to capture a lot of my desire, in that I can get a box installed in <5m including actual time to write out the file systems, which is great. I really don't want to lose this with a new installer :-). Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20080703092511.T69986>