Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:37:35 +0100 From: David Demelier <demelier.david@gmail.com> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSDInstall: merging to HEAD Message-ID: <4D38AB1F.8090308@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4D309563.1000404@freebsd.org> References: <4D309563.1000404@freebsd.org>
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On 14/01/2011 19:26, Nathan Whitehorn wrote: > As those of you who have been reading freebsd-sysinstall and > freebsd-arch know, I have been working for a few weeks on a lightweight > new installer 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 team. 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 > images > - 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-coded gpart commands), leave steps out, add new ones, or interleave > additional system modifications. > > Status > ------ > This provides functionality most similar to the existing sysinstall > 'Express' track. It installs working, bootable systems you can ssh into > immediately after reboot on i386, amd64, sparc64, powerpc, and > powerpc64. There is untested support for pc98. The final architecture on > which we use sysinstall, ia64, is currently unsupported, because I don't > know how to 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 the > installer. Some will be addressed before merging to HEAD, in particular > the lack of a man page for bsdinstall. Others, like configuration of > wireless 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 layout of releases. > > Please send any questions, comments, or patches you may have, and please > be aware when replying that this email has been cross-posted to three > lists. Technical discussion (bug reports, for instance) should be > directed to the freebsd-sysinstall list only. Most other discussion > belongs on -sysinstall and -current. > -Nathan > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" Why does the installer use GPT partition by default? Do you know that GPT is not supported on every (even modern) computer ? -- David Demelier
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