Re: Adding makemandb as build tool for man.db

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

On Wed, 31 Oct 2018 at 22:31, <userm57%yahoo.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> On 10/31/18 1:07 PM, Martin Husemann wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 01:59:57PM -0400, Mouse wrote:
> >>>> On slow/small enough machines you might want to disable cron
> >>>> altogether (or all of daily/weekly/monthly).
> >>> The smaller the machine, the more important proper house-keeping
> >>> becomes.
> >> Perhaps-- but opinions differ, shall we say, on what relation "proper
> >> housekeeping" bears to "/etc/{daily,weekly,monthly}".  Personally, I
> >> have negative interest in getting mail every day, week, and month when
> >> there is nothing worth reporting in that mail.  But others disagree,
> >> which is why that's easily configurable.
> > Exactly. I don't think sysinst should do too much for this cases, but
> > instead show a short document at the end that points to a (to be
> > created) wiki page where we describe the details of configurations
> > for small / slow machines.
>
> For slow machines, why not make those configurations the default?
> I don't normally depend on NetBSD (or GNU/Linux) as anything other
> than a hobby on any old system.  Usually, my thinking is along the
> lines of "Let's see if the speed of NetBSD has improved any since
> NetBSD x."  Or I'm checking whether the traditional installer works
> (for the first time, it failed with NetBSD 8.0; it has always failed
> when trying to write past the first gigabyte on a disk, but with 8.0
> the filesystem that Mkfs created wasn't recognized after booting).
>
> As for makemandb, I only noticed it was running after my first login
> to try to find out why system response was so slow (makemandb ran for
> at least three hours on an LC III).  And it took a long time to
> create the initial SSH keys. So my preference as a regular user would
> be to have everything documented in the installation guide, but then
> have defaults (or at least options) in sysinst to enable better
> performance.  And yes, for a slow system, that would include options
> to enable ftpd and telnetd (maybe include a warning that those are
> cleartext protocols and use tcpd to allow only the local subnet access
> by default).

This is definitely a case of one size does not fit all.

Proposal:
- Keep current default behaviour for everyone
- Provide a single, simple *documented* menu option for slow/very
small memory installs. Advanced users can read up on what it does and
make some subset of the changes by hand

Changes:
- Add a section on setup for slow cpu/small memory machines to install notes
- Add a new sysinst menu toggle "Set defaults for slow/very small
memory installs", default to off, which will
  1) Set makemandb=NO in rc.conf
  2) Set cron=NO in rc.conf
  3) Adjust the ssh keys (final values to be determined via separate thread)
  4) Potentially other changes, if deemed useful