Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 18:21:52 -0400 From: Chris Hill <jchill@dgsys.com> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Install *actually* friendly Message-ID: <v03007800b1ed30dc8847@[204.97.64.155]>
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I was going to post this anyway, but the recent message from Steve Roskowski (and its followups) has goaded me into action. I just installed FreeBSD a few days ago, and have a couple of gripes. 0. Background: a) I'm a newbie to PC hardware, though I've built dozens of other computers, including scratch-built microcontroller circuits. b) My sysadmin experience has been neither extensive nor recent, but I have seen the stuff. Gripes: 1. The instructions-docs-readmes pertaining to the installation need to be more explicit on the fact that the boot floppy's little kernel has enough smarts to handle an ftp installation all by itself. As they are, the docs seem to have an underlying presumption that the user is installing on an existing PC which is already running WinDOS. So much so, that I was under the impression that one needed some sort of pre-existing internet connectivity in order to install via ftp. (This was a virgin hard drive.) 2. Let's say some poor schmuck is trying to do an installation from floppies. If one of the diskettes is bad, why does the installer claim to have encountered a "Write failure on transfer!" when in fact it was a READ error due to the bad floppy? 3. The schmuck in question can always flip over to the other virtual console and look at the debugging info, but only if he knows to press alt-Fx. The only place I saw this mentioned was in the on-screen help for the *ftp* installation, but no mention was made anywhere else. The virtual console is a truly great feature, but it needs to be documented. Once I got this stuff straightened out, the installation was about as painless as it could possibly be - FreeBSD practically installs itself. Oh yeah, one more thing... 4. Since FreeBSD runs on PC hardware, I would have thought the default configuration would be set up to deal with all the "normal" devices one might expect to find on a PC. Although I don't anticipate using the floppy drive much if at all, still, it *is* there. I would have liked not to have had to manually edit my /etc/fstab just to be able to use my floppy drive. -- Chris Hill jchill@dgsys.com [place witty saying here] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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