Re: Installation of FreeBSD .

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 6:36 PM, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
<m.e.sanliturk_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> The installer may be allowed to make an installation diskette or USB stick
> to store installation options .
> When a new installation is tried on the same machine or in another similar
> machine ( especially for multiple installations ),
> allow user to use such an aid to use input of options .
> As an example : Mandriva Free 2008 .

The sysinstall(8) utility already automatic installation (though it
could be improved). Nothing prevents you also from installing FreeBSD
on a thumb drive and create some custom installation script.

[...]
> I am not fluent in C/C++ as much as Pascal and actually I am not using them.
> This means that I am not able to suggest any solution about mentioned
> improvements at present other than
> inform you about problems .

I doubt you would need C/C++ or Pascal. Shell scripting would suffice.

> I  copied "/boot/defaults/loader.conf "as "/boot/loader.conf ".

The loader already reads /boot/defaults/loader.conf  so you only need
to add to /boot/loader.conf the things that you want to change.

> I have changed the following parameters :
>
> usb_load="YES"
> ukbd_load="YES"
> ums_load="YES"
> umass_load="YES"
> umodem_load="YES"
> uscanner_load="YES"
>
>
> After these changes when started to boot FreeBSD , it is locked in detecting
> ( or probing ) keyboard controller .

I guess you are attempting to load ukbd with the GENERIC kernel, that
already includes the driver.

[trimmed stuff]

> There is no any rescue CD ( let's say ) to repair the above mentioned parts
> ( configuration files ) .
>
> I think this is a very important point to consider .

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i386/7.0/7.0-RELEASE-i386-livefs.iso

> During installation , if a list of ports collection is selected , it is
> continuously asking interchange of CD's .
[trimmed stuff]
> There no DVD *.ISO files for installations . If it is NOT diifcult to
> generate DVD *.ISO files ,
> it may solve this CD interchanging difficulty .

This was also lengthly discussed before too. Consider the option of
installing packages from network. If an installation DVD is required
then look at FreeBSD Mall:

http://www.freebsdmall.com/cgi-bin/fm

> The above points show that installation steps of FreeBSD should be
> re-considered carefully
> when compared to other operating system installations .

They are already being considered. Please follow the discussion lists
for a while.

[discussion about installation, GUI-based installation, et cetera]

There are several ongoing projects attempting to address this. Take a
look at PC-BSD and DesktopBSD:

     http://www.desktopbsd.net/
     http://www.pcbsd.org/

-- 
If you think things can't get worse it's probably only
because you lack sufficient imagination.