Jared D. McNeill writes:
   > 
   > The installer (for 1.5_ALPHA anyway) says that it can't detect an ethernet
   > card if I choose to do an ftp install after bringing up the sl0

   Well this is a bug IMHO.  It should either work or be disabled completely.

I think the basic problem here is that sysinst ignores some
interfaces.  The list of ignored interfaces in
/usr/src/distrib/utils/sysinst/net.c (the point at which sysinst
discovers the set of possible interfaces to configure) is:

     static const char *ignored_if_names[] = {
	     "eon",                  /* netiso */
	     "gre",                  /* net */
	     "ipip",                 /* netinet */
	     "gif",                  /* netinet6 */
	     "faith",                /* netinet6 */
	     "lo",                   /* net */
     #if 0
	     "mdecap",               /* netinet -- never in IF list (?) XXX */
     #endif
	     "nsip",                 /* netns */
	     "ppp",                  /* net */
	     "sl",                   /* net */
	     "strip",                /* net */
	     "tun",                  /* net */
	     /* XXX others? */
	     NULL,
     };

Consequently, sysinst is always ignoring ppp* and sl* interfaces and
one cannot use them easily for installations.

It does not seem appropriate to ignore at least the sl* interface for
exactly the reason that triggered this thread.  I'm not sure that ppp
is on the install media, so perhaps it is appropriate to ignore that
one for now.

This problem relates to a bug report (install/8344) of mine from
September 1999 which attempted to resolve the problem by not ignoring
so many interfaces.  My specific solution is long outdated since
sysinst has improved dramatically since then.  However, it seems that
the correct solution is just to eliminate (or comment out) the
relevant lines from the ignored_if_names list above.

Hope this helps and that someone attends to this issue before 1.5 is
released.

Cheers,
Brook