Subject: 1.6.1 sysinst
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: port-i386
Date: 11/15/2003 20:43:02
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.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B