Installer issues

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

I'm not sure which if either of these is SPARC-specific (see below for
my guesses), but it's the SPARC installer I noticed them with.

I tried to use a Tadpole 3GX to do a new 4.0.1 install.  (I already
have 4.0.1 on the Tadpole; I want to use it to prepare a disk for use
on another SPARC.)

So, I partitioned the disk the way I want it: 64M of boot partition at
the beginning (a), 34000M of / (this is to be an everything-on-/ setup)
next (d), and 668+M of swap (b) at the end.  Then I created e with
offset=1 size=63M to have a place to stick the miniroot image (using a
stomps on the label), and partition f with identical positioning to b
to have a place to put the installation sets.  The result:

sunlabel> P
a: start cyl =      0, size =   131072 (64/0/0 - 64Mb)
b: start cyl =  34064, size =  1368928 (668/13/32 - 668.422Mb)
c: start cyl =      0, size = 71132000 (34732/13/32 - 34732.4Mb)
d: start cyl =     64, size = 69632000 (34000/0/0 - 34000Mb)
e: start cyl =      1, size =   129024 (63/0/0 - 63Mb)
f: start cyl =  34064, size =  1368928 (668/13/32 - 668.422Mb)

aaddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddbb
cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc
 e                                                                          ff
sunlabel> 

Then I put the miniroot in e, then newfsed f and copied the sets there.
Rebooted from the miniroot ("boot disk1:e") and ran into the first
problem.

First problem: the installer kernel uses FONT_GALLANT12x22, which on
the Tadpole's 800x600 screen leads to a display siginificantly smaller
than 80x24.  This breaks the installer's screen layouts rather badly,
though, with an awareness of the issue, it's still possible to mostly
use it.

Then I picked "use existing partitions", edited the list to turn off
mounting of everything but d and to put that one on /.  Then I ran into
the second problem.

The installer tells me that a and e overlap.  Well, duh - but the
problem is, it doesn't have an option for "yes, I know, shut up and
just bloody do what I told you to"; the only options are to go back and
re-edit the partition table or abort the whole install.  Especially in
this case, where I turned off everything for a and e (among others) -
no newfs, no mount, no mount point, no nothing.

I suspect the first problem is SPARC-specific if you see the problem as
"the console is unreasonably small" and MI if you see it as "sysinst
doesn't <80x24 small consoles properly".  The second one strikes me as
probably MI; I should go digging and see if I can find sysinst source -
a five-second check for /usr/src/*/sysinst didn't find anything, so
it's probably lurking somewhere else.

I then tried the 5.0.2 installer, thinking I could at least report
whether these appear in something more recent (and, given the problems
in question, all I need is the miniroot; I don't need to actually
install).

I can't tell.  When I boot, it comes up with FONT_GALLANT12x22, but
wedges partway through telling me that it now prefers the new sysinst
installer; I'm unable to answer the question it is presumably asking me
(which I never saw).  Fortunately, Pause-A works; interestingly, it
does print the "stoppping on keyboard abort" message, but doing that
and then a "go" does not unwedge anything.  A Pause-A worked a second
time, at which point I gave up on checking out the 5.0.2 installer.
While I wouldn't say I feel confident of it, I suspect this problem,
whatever it is, is either SPARC-specific, Tadpole-specific, or
3GX-specific.  Except for losing part of the output, this looks
remarkably like PR 41194.

I can generate PRs for whatever subset of this it's thought worth doing
for....

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