new sysinstall

[Chip Norkus]

On Saturday 23 August 2003 01:45 pm, Matthew Dillon wrote:

[snip]
>
>     I would like a two-stage process, where everything you list is in
> the second stage.  The biggest problem with any install occurs when you
> go through all the work of installing the system onto your disks,
> reboot, and... nothing happens.  The system doesn't boot or doesn't
> mount, which means you have to go through the entire process all over
> again.
>
>     So the first thing I think an install should do is create a basic
>     slice and partition for /, swap, and /usr, copy the CD into it, and
>     reboot.  And the very first option should be, with appropriate
> sanity checks, a 'just do it and reboot' option.
>

That seems like a good idea actually, it's very frustrating to setup 
everything in sysinstall, hit go, and have it decide that it wants to 
panic while extracting files or that it won't boot on my disks.  Probably 
the minimal for stage one is partitioning and copying, and then booting 
up a skeletal system and basically doing package selection.  I believe 
this is how Debian tends to work.

> 	1. Shell prompt
>
> 	2. Reformat HD, install basic templates, and reboot before completing
> 	   the procedure.
>
> 	3. Scan network for templates, install or query for selection,
> 	   and reboot before completing the procedure.
>
>     Once rebooted into the HD we can then proceed to do all the
> time-consuming installation without worrying about having to start over
> from scratch.
>

That sounds optimal.  It would be nice if some better 'profiles' were 
developed as well, as far as packages go.  Maybe even combined profiles 
(which would be just meta-packages) like a kde profile with a developer 
profile, so you get the full kde/X/... install as well as all the stuff 
you get from a developer install.

Then give the user the option to go through and hand-select packages with 
whatever degree of precision they want.  For novice users they can just 
click (or whatever) their desktop user protocol and move along to 
watching the percentage bars roll. :)

> 					-Matt
> 					Matthew Dillon
> 					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

-wd
-- 
chip norkus; renaissance hacker;                wd at xxxxxxxx
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare     http://telekinesis.org/