new sysinstall

[Chip Norkus]

On Saturday 23 August 2003 02:25 pm, leimy2k at xxxxxxx wrote:

[snip]
>
> That is an interesting point but don't we already kind of have a
> running system when
> we first boot a CD?  Doesn't the kernel on the CD already "work" if we
> make it to the
> installer?  If so... what is the purpose of installing a really small
> installation to install
> the full installation?
>

Except that, for whatever reason, your system might not like booting off 
the hard drive in the same way it liked booting off the CD.  While all 
your hardware may seem to be supported, either the loader (at any stage) 
or kernel could actually fail on you.  I've seen this happen before on my 
machines, and have heard about it happening to other people.  When it 
does happen the last thing you want to do is trudge back to sysinstall 
and recheck everything (maybe multiple times) to get your system working.

> I think I am not 100% sold on this idea; not that I have to be or that
> my opinion is that
> important but I would like to understand this situation better and how
> the proposed
> solution actually helps solve the problem.  It seems I can still make a
> pretty bad
> installation even if I install a smaller good one first.
>

You absolutely can, the problem I think is having the installer fail in 
mid-installation or, worse, having your system turn out to be unbootable 
after you just spent thirty minutes (or an hour :/) orchestrating 
sysinstall is very frustrating, and installing in two stages like this 
can alleviate some of that frustration.

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

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