Re: Memstick image differences between 8.x and 9.x

On 9 October 2011 21:44, Adrian Chadd <adrian_at_freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 9 October 2011 19:10, Matt Thyer <matt.thyer_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Failure to boot the FreeBSD 9.0-BETA{2|3} memstick images does not
> indicate
> > a problem with a PCs BIOS/UEFI as these images are not properly
> formatted.
>
> Accepted.
>
> > If we were able to come up with examples of BIOS/UEFI that cannot boot
> from
> > GPT partitioned volumes there would not be a problem as long as
> bsdinstall
> > still supports partitioning volumes with MSDOS/MBR partitioning schemes.
> >
> > The big problem is being able to launch the installation process to start
> > with which is yet another reason to have the memstick image non-GPT even
> if
> > you could work out a script/kludge etc to be able to write a properly
> > formatted GPT memstick.
> >
> > The solution to this issue is obvious.
>
> Yes, it's "the current solution has a lot of unknown-how broken stuff
> about it, let's revert it for 9.0 and then use the 10.0 release cycle
> to do further research and testing."
>

Unfortunately there is no reasonable revert path here.  bsdinstall is the
way forward and I agree it should be the installer for 9.0-RELEASE.

Currently bsdinstall relies on labels and that's a good thing (intelligent
design choice).

Work is already underway to make the memstick issue with UFS labels and
MSDOS/MBR partitioning and when that's done this issue will be solved.

So it's not a matter of reverting, it's a matter of forging ahead and
delaying the release as this is a show stopper.