On Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 03:42:22PM +0200, Raimo Niskanen wrote:
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> On Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 07:18:05AM -0400, Nick Holland wrote:
> > Raimo Niskanen wrote:
> > > A lot of people has praised the current OpenBSD installer.
> > > I too. I think it is at the right level and does the right
> > > things, without unneccesary hazzle.
> > > 
> > > But...
> > > 
> > > There are a few things that I remember really missing when I was
> > > a beginner, and being nice to beginners is a good thing:
> > > 
> > > 1) Not every time did I have another machine to go to the
> > >    OpenBSD web site and read the install guide and related docs
> > >    online. It is almost necessary in order to succeed as a beginner,
> > >    and it could be improved upon.
> > > 
> > >    Why not put the install guide and disk partitioning guide on
> > >    the CD (maybe it is), and give very visible hints on how to
> > >    mount and read them during the installation from a parallel
> > >    console (i386) or how to exit to a shell to read during
> > >    installation.
> > 
> > 1) there are no multiple consoles on the install kernel.
> 
> Ouch!

How big a deal would it be to do that?

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> 
> > 2) I really think it would be excessively awkward to be trying
> > to read docs on the same machine you are installing to.
> 
> Yes. But not impossible :-)
> 
> > 3) the CD set provides much of this in printed form.
> 
> But not any good disk partitioning examples.
> 
> > 
> > Granted, I may be an extreme case, but I really can't imagine
> > there are a lot of people installing OpenBSD on their one-and-
> > only computer who couldn't have at least printed out some docs
> > before hand.
> > 
>
> Well, it is hard to know beforehand for the beginner which
> documents are worth printing, and for a long while I did not
> have a printer. To print the installation guide is unfortunately
> not enough. Selected parts of the FAQ or some of the documents
> the installation guide points to is also necessary.
> 
> > > 1b)Having the partitioning guide available while installing
> > >    is maybe good enough, but it would also be nice if there
> > >    was a disklabel template for large enough disks that
> > >    created / swap /var /tmp /usr sufficient for a potent
> > >    desktop install capable of kernel and ports tree compilation,
> > >    and the rest on /home.

And one for really small disks where there is no hope of being able to
compile anything; like my current 850 MB drive.  According to the docs,
that's not enough room.  So I have everything in a (/) and b (swap).
Once I get the box set up, I'll be able to see what sizes are needed and
can reinstall with proper partitioning.  /home is quite small.


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> > 
> > actually, the FAQ provides a pretty good example for this (if I
> > do say so myself! :)  I've actually been wanting to add some
> > other partitioning examples (for 1G, 4G, 20G hds with some
> > specific apps), but obviously it isn't there yet. :-/
> > 
> 
> Yes, it is excellent. But the whole FAQ is too much to print.
> 
Especially on my slow dot-matrix printer with a broken ribbon advance.
That's a lot of knob-twiddling. :)
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> 
> I guess many new users have very good reasons to why they want
> to test OpenBSD on a certain machine, and to why it must have
> other OSes too. If you have a spare machine you can take to
> install an unknown OS (OpenBSD) just for fun, it is probably
> because the machine is too old or to broken to be usable.
> 

My 486 now will only run OpenBSD or NetBSD (or old versions of Debian,
dos, whatever).
 

Would it be difficult to provide on the CD and perhaps a tarball on FTP
a directory structure that would allow an option from the installer
(either on the same screen or a separate terminal if that was possible)
to run lynx to read the FAQ directly off the CD?

Doug.