Long standing problems with sysinstall

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 2 Nov 2011, Blake McBride wrote:

> 1.  In order to escape the virtual machine (VM) you hit the control key
> and the command key together.

Which VM?  FreeBSD as a guest should not run any different than on real 
hardware.  If the VM host's command key does not work right, that 
implies a problem with the VM software.  And of course the "command" key 
could differ depending on VM software.  Which keys, exactly?  Or is this 
a Mac with an actual "command" key?

> Both keys are supposed to be like the shift key - they don't do 
> anything by themselves, they modify the behavior of another key. 
> Hitting those two keys together should never do anything unless they 
> are pressed with another key.  However, in your install program the 
> command key seems to exit the install.  This means that if I attempt 
> to do something else on my machine I must hit the control key together 
> with the command key to move my mouse to my other applications but 
> doing so exits the FreeBSD install!

Again, this would be up to the VM software.  VirtualBox uses the right 
Control key, and it works as expected, switching the keyboard input 
focus from the VM guest to the host machine.

> 2.  On the screen "Distribution Select" the user selects his/her
> desired distribution set.  Selection requires the use of the space
> bar.  Now, this may be obvious to someone who does FreeBSD day-in and
> day-out, and it would also be obvious to those familiar with the old
> text based GUI's from the DOS days, but anyone else wouldn't have a
> clue.  Why don't you include a little comment on the screen telling
> the to perform their selection with the space bar?

The curses interface is standard across a lot of software, although I 
can sympathize with the desire for onscreen help.  But if instructions 
on using space to select/deselect are needed onscreen here, there are 
lots of other places all throughout the install that should have them 
also.  It's not practical on some screens with space restrictions. 
Maybe a global "Press F1 for keystroke help".

> 3.  I now have the system installed and I am attempting to add packages.  I
> go into sysinstall.

See the man page for pkg_add about the PACKAGESITE variable.  A value of 
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-9-current/Latest
would get the latest 9.0 packages for amd64.  (Untested, I generally 
don't use packages.)