Re: GSoC: Sysinst enhancements proposal

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On 3 April 2012 18:43, Eugene Lozovoy <uzix.ls%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>
>> 5) The disk partitioning functions would be useful on an installed
>>    system.
>
> I see three ways to do this:
> 1) Import sysinst into base;
> 2) Create separate disk management utility and just run it during
>   installation process;
> 3) Write library and use it for sysinst and for new utility.
> What way will be selected - is more political issue, I think.

I would be interested in the possibility of enhancing the existing disk
management tools (disklabel, gpt, fdisk, raidctl, etc) to make them
both easier to use in a scripting environment, and to have more 'take
default' options - eg, a simple commandline option to create a raid1
set without having to specify "START layout" etc.

Obviously sysinst would then use the improved interface.

As a use case,
http://abs0d.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/setting-up-8tb-netbsd-file-server.html
runs through setting up a RAID5 setup on four disks. There is quite a lot
of typing involved, but in particular answering ten questions to fdisk when
just wanting to default the entire disk to run NetBSD seems a lot...
http://abs0d.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/setting-up-8tb-netbsd-file-server.html

It may still be better to create a different utility, or library, but
I just wanted
to raise the option of improving some of the existing utilities :)