Changes and Updates to Installation chapter

[Marc Fonvieille]

On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 04:00:30PM +0100, Niclas Zeising wrote:
> This is a list of changes that I think are needed in the Installation 
> Chapter of the Handbook. It is not a patch to the documentation or 
> anything, I want to discuss the changes before continuing working with 
> doing the actual changes.
> 
> In short, it is mostly an update to bring the installation chapter up to 
> speed. New screenshots from sysinstall, changes to match the reality and 
> the current state of sysinstall, those kind of things.
> Some of the bigger changes is removal of alpha-specific bits, or at 
> least add a note regarding the status of Alpha. Someone with 
> alpha-experience need to validate that the instructions for alpha still 
> is correct. Maybe we should add something about SPARC if there is big 
> difference from installing on an i386/amd64.
> Further, it's removal of most of the X-related bits, pointing the user 
> to the X chapter instead, since X configuration is not part of the 
> installation procedure anymore. One note on this is that most Linux 
> distributions comes with X pretty much setup from default installation. 
>  I think we have to have clear and precise notes on how to set up X so 
> people not used to the command line can get their graphical interface.

Hello,

(Quick answer)

You think about xorgcfg(1)?  It is possible to add the dozen of
xorgcfg's screens but it will remain difficult for the newbie cause the
same "weird" questions will be asked, but this time, via a graphical
interface.  I mean using "Xorg -configure" or xorgcfg(1) is quite the
same thing, we have no FreeBSD specific GUI to configure X11, so we
cannot "compete" with the Installers you seen on some Linux distribution
or some desktop oriented FreeBSD derivatives.

> The biggest change I suggest is removal of most of the bits regarding 
> networking, and putting them in some sort of "Simple networking" chapter 
> in the networking section instead.

I think it's not possible and not a good thing to remove things that the
user can or will meet/need during installation process (don't forget
some people get installation files via Internet, etc.).

> I think we only should have 
> instructions on how to get an internet connection up and working in the 
> workstation sense, i. e. how to be able to surf the net and so on.

Well if the user's Internet connection setup is not done via DHCP you
cannot easily describe a general way to set up the Internet access.
If the connection uses DHCP, it's fine since this configuration can be
done at installation time in the parts you want to remove.

> WWW/FTP-servers, NFS and so on doesn't belong in an installation chapter 
> in my opinion.

By Installation chapter, the idea was covering everything that can be
done during the installation process with our installer (currently
sysinstall).  It's possible to configure everything (but X11) during the
installation, which is very interesting for some users.

> I also had an idea of adding a chapter to the networking section which 
> talks about tcp/ip-networks in general, subnetting, routing and so on. 
> Is that too much of topic?
>

It's not what does the "27.2 Gateways and Routes" section and some other
sections?

> This is just suggestions. As said before I would like some input on this 
> before continuing to do the actual work. I have a more detailed list 
> about what's needed to be done, but since it's mostly small fixes I 
> realized the above summary better describes what has to be done. I can 
> type it down and post it if someone asks for it.
>

>From my point of view, we need to update the current text and
screenshots to match the current installation process (the current steps
the user will meet during the installation).  The X11 part in the
current Installation chapter can be reduced, in fact changed to match
what is done during the use of sysinstall(8).  I don't think we need to
remove things cause they may be "difficult" to understand by the user,
we must keep post-installation steps.

Marc