On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 08:43:02PM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
> I just tried to set up a 1.6.1 system for someone else, and I find that
> sysinst is rather severely broken (to the point that if I hadn't known
> what I was doing, I probably would not have been able to install).
> 
> Before I go to the trouble of writing up my experiences (and in
> particular before I do a lot of retries while writing down the failure
> modes), I'd like to make sure it's worthwhile.  In particular, I seem
> to recall that a lot has been done to sysinst since 1.6.1 was cut, and
> if that's so, there's little point in re-reporting problems that are
> long fixed.
> 
> In case it's of any help, here's a brief synopsis of the problems I
> saw, from memory:
> 
> - Partitioning the disk failed; I had to use disklabel -e by hand (from
>    the utility menu's /bin/sh option) to get a label on the disk.
>    sysinst didn't newfs the filesystem and installboot thus couldn't
>    mount it to install the bootblocks.  This was because I had
>    forgotten to specify mount points, but the failure mode did not
>    point to forgotten mount point specifications even to a relatively
>    experienced NetBSD admin, so perhaps sysinst should be coded to
>    check for missing mount point names?
> 
> - Autofetching the sets by FTP failed, telling me that / was full,
>    presumably because it was trying to fetch the sets into the mfs /.
>    Even mounting an mfs /tmp and telling it to put things there rather
>    than in /usr/INSTALL didn't help.  I finally mounted an mfs /tmp big
>    enough to hold all the sets, FTPed them by hand, and then told
>    sysinst to get the sets from an existing local directory.  This may
>    be related to the forgotten mount points; I didn't notice that until
>    I'd already FTPed all the sets into the mfs /tmp.
> 
> If people think it's worth doing, I can snapshot the disk elsewhere,
> wipe it, and go through the exercise again taking notes.

----

Hello,

Yes, I had problems going through the install process (NetBSD 1.6.1) on
three different (i386) machines, too.  The main problem I encountered was
that the filesystem creation (newfs) seemed to fail when I configured more
filesystems than the default: root (/) + /usr.  At the point of failure
some error messages flash onscreen, but too fast to interpret; you end
up with an "unable to mount ..." message (don't recall the last part
exactly).

I eventually discovered the utility menu's logging facility, turned that
on, tried again, and after scanning what had been captured there, figured
out that for some reason the newfs had not worked[?].  So I tried issuing
the required newfs + mounts manually, then went back to the sysinst menus
and "continued."  It worked: sysinst got past the (earlier) point of
failure and I was able to complete the installation.  I had to do this
on all of the systems I tried to install 1.6.1.

sysinst needs some serious attention.  This is, afer all, the part a
new NetBSD user sees first, and failures like this do not inspire
confidence.

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Dion