> In the current (install set) system, people have to download a lot of
> data that they don't want.  I think that retaining this is probably an
> acceptable overhead at the initial install time, in return for the
> flexibility and convenience provided by package sets.
...
> As Jonathan pointed out, by the time the tool is running, it's too late
> to do this if you're installing by NFS, from a local partition, from
> floppy, or by any means except FTP.  Depending on the tool being able to
> download any packages the user missed is fine in a pkgsrc setting, but
> is probably not reasonable at system install time.

Hmm...

Suppose I download base.tgz, kern.tgz, and a file containing all the
precomputed package sizes. Tell it what I want so it knows how to size
my partitions, and install the base system. Reboot. (It should also save
my package selections in a data file somewhere, perhaps /etc.)

Then I use the basic system to set up my download path and have it chug
through the previously saved list of desired packages.

The only gotcha I can see here is that you need accurate "enough" size
information (which fstype? what fragsize? etc.) or else there will be
corner case errors that could not be detected until after you are running
from the badly partitioned disk.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com