On Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 03:42:22PM +0200, Raimo Niskanen wrote:
quoted text > 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?
quoted text >
> > 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.
quoted text > >
> > 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. :)
quoted text >
> 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.