Installer changes on master (does not effect release)

PeerCorps Trust Fund ipc at peercorpstrust.org
Tue Dec 15 12:54:12 PST 2015


Understood.

Simplicity is appreciated. 

On 12/15/2015 09:22 PM, Matthew Dillon wrote:
> The installer is meant to be simple.  Trying to edit slice or partition
> tables setup by other operating systems opens a big can of worms.  We don't
> really have the developer time available to do something as complex as what
> linux has.  So generally speaking users are on their own when it comes
> multi-OS installs.  For single-OS installs, DragonFly's installer works
> well.  At best we will be able to bang UEFI booting into shape at some
> point, but that's the only new boot-loader work really contemplated.
> 
> The DOS slice table vs gpt isn't a big deal, but we'd need updated gpt
> tools from FreeBSD and developer time to make it an installer option.  It
> should be noted that the DOS slice table is just a degenerate form... for
> example, if the drive is larger than 2TB fdisk can't configure a slice to
> be larger, but the kernel recognizes that a slice ending in 0xffffffff
> should literally mean 'the whole rest of the disk' regardless of other
> considerations.  So it is simple and it just works.  Complex
> slice/partition setups are usually a lose.
> 
> We put a disklabel64 on top of whatever low-level scheme is used and that
> will not change.  The disklabel mechanic gives us significantly better
> control over the disk layout than a slice or gpt mechanic.  We will
> generally always want to have a disklabel.
> 
> -Matt
> 
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 6:51 AM, PeerCorps Trust Fund <
> ipc at peercorpstrust.org> wrote:
> 
>> Since the topic is at hand.
>>
>> Was there a technical reason why a disk partition tool isn't built into
>> the installer?
>>
>> As of 4.4.1 when configuring disks for installation, the installer still
>> recommends using DOS, another *BSD or Linux to partition disks.
>>




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