On Sun, Aug 18, 2002 at 10:24:40PM -0500, Brian Grayson (home) wrote:

>   It's been a few years since I've done an install from scratch,
> and a couple of things bugged me when I actually tried it with a
> near-1.6-ish CD that Wasabi gave me (@ SNDF, FWIW).  Unfortunately, my
> main machine is not in much of a state for me to do much besides mention
> it here.
> 
>   1.  One of the screens (can't remember which off-hand -- I may trash
>   the partition and try a reinstall when I've got some free time)
>   prints text underneath the menu in the middle of the screen, making it
>   hard to read everything.  Luckily, I think the hidden text wasn't all
>   that critical.

It's the password cipher selection screen, and it has already been
fixed (and pulled up for 1.6), but thanks for picking this up :-)

>   2.  I said "no" to bootblocks, since the machine was going to
>   have the NT bootloader on it.  But then a few screens later, it
>   asked me "serial or normal bootblocks", with no "none" option.
>
>   a)  Is this second query supposed to show up when I say "no boot
>   blocks"?
> 
>   b)  If it _is_ supposed to show up (i.e., it's talking about the
>   partition's boot blocks, and not the MBR's), it'd be nice if the
>   text made that distinction clear.  I don't remember it saying
>   anything about why it was asking me again.

The first question is the MBR bootloader, which is quite separate from
the NetBSD bootblock. NT's boot loader is "special" in that you can
feed it a bootblock in a file, or it can read it from the MBR partition.
Most of the time, you will need a bootblock installed on your NetBSD
partition, however.

The text in this question could perhaps be made a little clearer.

>   3.  I had a partition set aside, and gave it ID 169, but did not
>   newfs it.  When I ran sysinst, it assumed that since the ID was
>   ready to go, it had been newfs'd.  So, when it tried to mount it,
>   the mount failed.  Since so many disk partition tools allow one to
>   specify the ID, it would be nice if it said "Hm.  NetBSD ID on the
>   partition, but FFS partition not found.  Do you want me to newfs this
>   for you?"

I'm not sure of this behavior, though it sounds like a useful
potential addition.

>   If I get the time to start from scratch again, I'll try to document
> better the places where these occur.  (I had to fend two 2-year-olds
> away from the keyboard the last time through, and that's hard enough
> to do without keeping them away from pen and paper as well!)

Thanks for the information, feedback is always very welcome!

Hope this helps,
grant.