Re: FreeBSD Installer Roadmap

On 2011-Feb-22 02:50:54 -0800, Devin Teske <dteske_at_vicor.com> wrote:
>That's the operative word here ("supports"). Lord help us when that
>changes to "requires" (that is to say, if/when the FreeBSD kernel
>becomes legacy-free with respect to supporting fdisk/disklabel
>partitioned disks).

When that does come, it will probably be driven by BIOS and hardware
vendors dropping support for MBR.  Current disks are at the upper
limit of what MBR can be support (and that's after several revamps of
MBR).  Since GPT already provides a superior feature set without MBR's
limits, the next step will be to just drop MBR support.  And when it
does come, FreeBSD needs to be ready with an installer that can cope
with non-MBR disks.

>We've yet to see a "must have" technology that would require us to
>shun sysinstall (as explained earlier, we have no desire whatsoever
>to boot from ZFS, gmirror, geli, GPT, or anything else missing from
>sysinstall).

Whilst _you_ might not be interested, lots of other people _are_
interested in using these features - I personally use a mixture of
gmirror, GPT and ZFS root on different systems.  Why should other
people be forced to avoid these features just because you don't use
them?  FreeBSD's installer should support the same features as FreeBSD
itself for consistency.

>pedestals... why would we ever need >8GB for the operating system?
>all production data is being stored on enterprise class devices such
>as the NEC-D210, and being backed up with tapes such as LTO;

Not everyone uses FreeBSD in the same environment as you.

>We're no stranger to putting even the Operating System on Life
>Support for as long as it takes for our customers to bolster their
>budgets for an integrated upgrade strategy.

Given that you've already said you are staying with FreeBSD 4.11,
why are you at all worried about FreeBSD using a new installed in
FreeBSD 9 to support features that don't exist in FreeBSD 4?

FreeBSD is primarily a volunteer project.  Whilst you may be an expert
on the innards of sysinstall, this seems to be a rare skill and no-one
(including yourself) has stepped up and offered to add the missing
functionality to sysinstall.  It's worth noting that the original
author of sysinstall considered it to be a temporary stop-gap until
something better was developed.  The increasing disparity between
FreeBSD's features, together with the opaqueness of sysinstall have
led to a replacement being developed.  No-one is forcing you to
replace sysinstall on your legacy systems but if you want sysinstall
to remain the default installer, you are going to need to add the
missing functionality to it.

-- 
Peter Jeremy