On Sun, 6 Feb 2000, Todd Whitesel wrote:

>   2. src/distrib/* could be unified a lot more than they are now. When I'm
>     done with 1.4.2 and move the ArchFarm back to current, I'll get on it,
>     if only to keep my sanity. I also want to automate the process of
>     determining the correct geometry values for miniroots. Right now we get
>     lots of spurious vnd overflows because of hardcoded numbers in Makefiles
>     and kernel configs.

That and commands not using ${DESTDIR}/etc/disktab - assuming you're
running what you're making. :-)

>   3. sysinst. the main things it needs in order to kick ass are:
>     a. Farm out the format/partition stuff to its own program. This is
> 	useful by itself for non-system disk setup, and gets 99% of the
> 	arch dependent sysinst code out of sysinst! We should make it as
> 	trivial as possible to get a barebones sysinst running on new arch's.

This idea is really good. :-)

>     b. Add a ``null'' format/partition module, so sysinst can cope with /mnt
> 	and whatever you put on it before running sysinst, or let you browse
> 	stuff you might want to mount there to install on. This makes weird
> 	multi-booting setups easier to handle; it can also simplify diskless
> 	installs by letting you netboot an install kernel, mount a blank root
> 	dir on the server, and populate the whole thing painlessly.

The ability to skip the formatting step would help.

>     c. Improve FTP install to stream directly into pax, thus removing the
> 	need for local disk to hold tarballs during install. If this worked,
> 	I bet NFS install would instantly become expendable.

I like the idea of ftp straming into pax. But I doubt it would make NFS
expendable. :-) We're one site which runs NFS and not FTP, and have
locally-modified tries. With NFS install, it's easy. :-)

Take care,

Bill