Re: [RFC] Rewriting sade(8)

Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd_at_gmail.com> writes:
>   
>> Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des_at_des.no> writes:
>>     
>>> Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd_at_gmail.com> writes:
>>>       
>>>> Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des_at_des.no> writes:
>>>>         
>>>>> [restored relevant context which was removed earlier in the thread]
>>>>> ...which is exactly what I said - but in the sysinstall case, you may
>>>>> want to ask some additional questions ("are you sure you want to proceed
>>>>> without a swap partition?") or place some additional constraints (such
>>>>> as "don't allow the user to mount something on top of /mnt or /rescue"),
>>>>> and sysinstall needs to know the outcome.
>>>>>           
>>>> If the user shoots him or herself in the foot, that's their own
>>>> problem.
>>>>         
>>> That kind of attitude is why people choose Linux over FreeBSD...
>>>       
>> Where do you draw the line though? /media, /libexec, /proc, /sys, etc?
>> I think it's better to educate users than build in more complexity to
>> the install application.
>>     
>
> I draw the line at mounting something - anything - on top of directories
> that contain files that are critical to sysinstall's operation.  IIRC,
> /mnt is where the installation CD is mounted.
>
> In sysinstall mode, sade's role is to 1) make sure that something
> sensible is mounted in the location where sysinstall is going to install
> the OS, 2) assist the user in making the correct disk, slice, partition
> or what-have-you bootable, 3) within reasonable limits, prevent the user
> from doing something that will break sysinstall, and 4) optionally allow
> the user to prepare additional filesystems that sysinstall doesn't care
> about (e.g. /usr/obj), as long as this does not conflict with 3).
>
> I think the easiest way to achieve this is for sysinstall to provide an
> empty directory (e.g. /inst) and have sade operate with that directory
> as root, so what the user sees is how things will look when the system
> reboots after installation; when the user asks sade to create /usr/obj,
> sade actually creates /inst/usr/obj.
>
> Last but not least, sade should report what it did to sysinstall -
> perhaps in fstab format, since sysinstall needs to populate
> (/inst)/etc/fstab anyway.
>
> DES
>   
But... If this is a fresh install, then you really have not lost 
anything if you making a mistake. If sysinstall / sade is run from a 
running system and a mistake is made then you could loose your data, but 
as you will need to have su-ed up, how does this differ from typing a 
wrong command in?

Just my 2 cents

Paul