bsdinstall - testers wanted

**joel@** · #1 January 10th, 2011, 21:15

Nathan Whitehorn (nwhitehorn@) recently announced his work on a possible sysinstall replacement. The goal is to replace sysinstall in 9.0 but he's in need of more testers.

You can download a snapshot iso with the new installer here.

Just download it and try it on real hardware or in vmware/virtualbox/whatever.

You can read his initial announcement here.

Make sure you send your feedback, comments and bug reports to Nathan.

There's also a wiki page here.

Edit. Added the new install ISO.

**joel@** · #2 January 11th, 2011, 19:19

Nathan has created a new install ISO. Grab it here.

mfaridi · #3 January 12th, 2011, 15:03

I test last one, it is good, but I think sysinstall give use more option, for install, but nice thing I see was LiveCD option and it is great, the partitioning I think is so close and do to give more option like sysinstall, it installed FreeBSD 9 current for me. I will check last one.

fmw · #4 January 14th, 2011, 11:56

Just took a quick look.

It would probably be nice to set the keyboard layout - I do use a QWERTY keyboard once in awhile, but not often enough to remember the layout.

I like the live CD option, but for troubleshooting existing installations, it might be nice to have a few mountpoints more at your disposal.

For relative noobs like myself, it would be good to get a little help with partitioning akin to the auto defaults option in sysinstall.

troberts · #5 January 14th, 2011, 18:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfaridi

I test last one, it is good, but I think sysinstall give use more option, for install, but nice thing I see was LiveCD option and it is great, the partitioning I think is so close and do to give more option like sysinstall, it installed FreeBSD 9 current for me. I will check last one.

Does it only install FreeBSD 9 current or did you have a choice? I am about to wipe Gentoo and replace it with FreeBSD, but I want to install FreeBSD 8, and since I am going to turn it into 8-STABLE, all I need is a working system that will let me dual-boot with Windows.

**joel@** · #6 January 15th, 2011, 00:39

A new ISO has been released. Get it here.

troberts · #7 January 15th, 2011, 00:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by joel@

A new ISO has been released. Get it here.

Does it install FreeBSD 8 or 9?

da1 · #8 January 15th, 2011, 09:13

Would be nice to have a list of "what's new" for each snap ...

**joel@** · #9 January 15th, 2011, 09:36

It installs 9-CURRENT. Take a look at user/nwhitehorn/bsdinstall/ in svn to see all changes.

troberts · #10 January 15th, 2011, 18:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by joel@

It installs 9-CURRENT. Take a look at user/nwhitehorn/bsdinstall/ in svn to see all changes.

Thank you. I had planned on using FreeBSD 8-STABLE but I guess I can give FreeBSD 9 a chance. If I have too many problems then I can always wipe it and install FreeBSD 8-STABLE.

**joel@** · #11 January 17th, 2011, 21:59

There's a new snapshot available. Grab it here.

**phoenix** · #12 January 18th, 2011, 19:12

bsdinstall front-end to be converted to use pc-sysinstall back-end, to become the default installer for 9.0.

Interesting times ahead.

**joel@** · #13 January 20th, 2011, 07:10

New snapshots seem to appear almost every day, so always download the snapshot from my first message in this thread. It should always point to the latest ISO available.

roddi · #14 January 21st, 2011, 22:33

Will the new installer eventually support installing ZFS on root?

SIFE · #15 January 22nd, 2011, 11:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by roddi

Will the new installer eventually support installing ZFS on root?

I tested and as I see it doesn't.
I tested the new bsdinstall-i386-20110118, I create boot slice and the second zfs, now after I get to shell and when I check zpool list I get nothing, why?
If I am wrong, it will be better to give a guide to how install FreeBSD with ZFS file system with the new installer.

irkkaaja · #16 January 31st, 2011, 22:00

Installed with this, works okay. Thoughts:

It'd be nice to have the new installer configure wireless internet connections. Doing it manually post-install is a giant pain:

Code:

# ifconfig iwn0 up
# ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev iwn0
# ifconfig wlan0 up
# cat > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
{a bunch of nonsensical jibberish}
EOF
# wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
# dhclient -b wlan0

all of which you have to, y'know, memorize, if you only have one computer and can't get on the Internet during the process.

Also, the sound driver doesn't work:

Code:

# kldload snd_driver
kldload: can't load snd_driver: No such file or directory

I did get it to work by using snd_hda, but it really ought to be fixed. I'm guessing one of the portions of the metadriver no longer exists.

**joel@** · #17 February 7th, 2011, 19:51

One of the recently added features to bsdinstall is support for configuring your wireless nic during installation. Yay.

spam · #18 February 12th, 2011, 20:33

Such an easy install would attract a lot of newbies, but in reality they still need desktop-ready compilations.
I hope it's just example and expect some kind "advanced" option with full sysinstall functionality.

Thanks.

frijsdijk · #19 February 18th, 2011, 16:28

I can't install on ZFS. It errors out with:

Code:

Error mounting partition /mnt:
mont: /dev/ad0p2 : Invalid argument

I've chosen freebsd-zfs for /

Code:

Steps: Partitioning: Guided, Entire Disk.
ad0p1, 64kb, freebsd-boot
ad0p2, 6.9GB, freebsd-zfs /
ad0p3, 372MB, freebsd-swap none

The installer accepts the parameters, but after saving it errors out.

frijsdijk · #20 February 18th, 2011, 16:29

I was using bsdinstall-i386-20110205.iso.bz2 in VirtualBox.

zennybsd · #21 April 4th, 2011, 10:10

Maybe I am an old-styled sysadmin, but I found sysinstall having more options than bsdinstall. But as a sysadmin, I like to create configurations from ground up editing the /boot/loader.conf and /etc/rc.conf and other files making me aware what is where, and implications of the changes to system further helping me debug the system ;-)

PC-BSD already has a comprehensive installer like bsdinstall which has an option to install freebsd-core only and with zfs option if somebody wants. The only problem with their live CD is booting is a hit and trial or guesswork (works in some machines and freezes in others, I tried in several machines so far).

Kitche · #22 April 4th, 2011, 13:01

Which FreeBSD also has in -current called pc-sysinstall; I tend to use that myself but haven't used the bsdinstall since it came out.

kpedersen · #23 April 4th, 2011, 14:11

Cool. I am going to give this a play tonight.

Hopefully it will be similar to OpenBSD's where I can just pretty much hold the enter button and everything gets installed with pretty sane defaults (apart from Canada timezone lol)

**phoenix** · #24 April 4th, 2011, 16:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by zennybsd

MaybeI am old-styled sysadmin, but I found sysinstall having more options than bsdinstall.

The beauty of bsdinstall is that it is just an installer. It doesn't give you options for configuring the system, it doesn't have 40 bajillion screens to flip through, it doesn't have 14 different ways to start the install, it doesn't clutter up the screen with options no one has clicked on in umpteen years, etc.

You partition your disk. You install the OS. You reboot into the OS. Once the OS is installed and booted, you can configure it to your heart's content, using the tools that come with the OS, and not trying to shoehorn an installer into a system configuration tool.

Plus, the bsdinstall CD is a LiveCD, so anything you can do from a shell in FreeBSD, you can do at a shell via the installer. So, if you want any kind of complex install setup, you just drop to a shell, run the commands needed, pop back to the installer and carry on. Works great for setting up gmirror(8), hastd(8), gpart(8) partitioning, zfs(8), etc.

bsdinstall gets out of your way, lets you do things how you want, and just gives you a bootable OS.

Compared to sysinstall, it's like a glass of ice cold beer after a long day at the beach.

Quote:

But as a sysadmin, I like to create configurations from ground up editing the /boot/loader.conf and /etc/rc.conf and other files making me aware what is where, and implications of the changes to system further helping me debug the system ;-)

IOW, you like bsdinstall more than sysinstall.

Quote:

PC-BSD already has a comprehensive installer like bsdinstall which has an option to install freebsd-core only and with zfs option if somebody wants. The only problem with their live CD is booting is a hit and trial or guesswork (works in some machines and freezes in others, I tried in several machines so far).

PC-BSD installer GUI is nice, but limiting in what you can do with it. I could not get a gmirror-based install to work, nor a 24-drive ZFS pool to work, nor even a 2-disk ZFS pool. If you go with the defaults, the PC-BSD installer is nice. But it's not a LiveCD, it doesn't provide you with a shell (that I could find). For setting up a desktop, it works nicely. Not so much for multi-disk server installs.

Fortunately, bsdinstall and pc-sysinstall are merging in the future, so we should get the power and simplicity of both.

zennybsd · #25 April 4th, 2011, 16:54

@phoenix: You are right and I do agree that bsdinstall is simpler than sysinstall, but if you want to do something at atomic level (except ZFS), sysinstall is what I found better, though some of the configurations options are in duplicates.

The best among all installers that I found among operating systems is that of slackware and variants like zenwalk or salixos. It is fast to install (maybe they adopted xz compression) and atomic, too.

I think bsdinstall would be wonderful if they just get inspiration from slackware installer and add just add the gpart, hastd, gmirror and zfs part as an addition as you suggested, imho (even does not worth 2 cents ;-)

And about PC-BSD, it is not production ready due to its random responsiveness.

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