Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newspump.sol.net!newsfeeds.sol.net!nntp.uio.no!news.apfel.de!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-ber1.dfn.de!news-lei1.dfn.de!news-nue1.dfn.de!news-mue1.dfn.de!news-stu1.dfn.de!news.belwue.de!emw4maba.slip.gp.fht-esslingen.de!emw4maba
From: Markus Baeurle <emw4maba@gp.fht-esslingen.de>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: Why no addusr?
Date: Sun, 02 Feb 1997 21:27:10 +0100
Organization: FHT Esslingen, Deutschland
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <ed874a5647@emw4maba.slip.gp.fht-esslingen.de>
References: <none-ya023480001912962244220001@news.infi.net> <5aj14j$ri8@abel.ic.sunysb.edu> <5arjo9$foo@cynic.portal.ca> <5as0dq$a0l@keyhole.west.spy.net> <5astvf$hos@cynic.portal.ca>
NNTP-Posting-Host: emw4maba.slip.gp.fht-esslingen.de
X-Newsreader: Messenger v0.28 for RISC OS
X-Posting-Agent: RISC OS Newsbase 0.56
X-NNTP-Poster: FreeNews 1.02
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:5281
Hello Curt,
in article <5astvf$hos@cynic.portal.ca>
cjs@cynic.portal.ca (Curt Sampson) wrote:
> Actually, after a half dozen installs you'll probably find you can
> install faster by ignoring the install routines completely and just
> setting up and untarring the stuff yourself at the root prompt.
To a certain degree I agree.
I prefer to get assistance when setting up the harddisk though.
And for the arm32 port it's also easier to start the inst program and type
"REQ" when asked for the sets to be installed instead of cating the set files
together und untaring by hand.
> Nobody with any reasonable sysadmin skills is going to have any
> trouble with NetBSD once they've gotten over the initial learning
> stages. This is possibly one of the reasons that NetBSD doesn't
> have such nice install routines: NetBSD users are for the most part
> fairly sophisticated, and of course people tend to be reluctant to
> write code they won't use. (Probably they are for the most part
> fairly sophisticated because the less sophisticated users use
> something easier, however.)
You're 150% right.
Now there are still the unexperienced users...
> I do think, however, there is a place in the Unix world for very
> easy-to-install, easy-to-run systems that concentrate on having
And as I said in another message NetBSD is the only free Unix for users of
"exotic" machines such as Amiga, Atari, Acorn, Mac, older HPs and Suns....
If we want NetBSD to survive (and I think you need at least as many users and
developers as NetBSD has today for that) and if we're serious about providing a
free BSD-Unix system with sources as an alternative to the commercial stuff we
have to address these issues.
> good install procedures and good binary packages, even at the
> expense of being painful for sophisticated Unix hackers to use.
If you do it carefully this need not be.
That's one thing I'm missing for the FreeBSD installation: An easy way to get
to a shell prompt to do something by hand.
If the possibility to get to the shell after the root filesystem has been set
up on the memory disk (by typing "n" when asked "Proceed with installation?")
is left intact even if the rest of the NetBSD installation is improved, the
gurus still have their root prompt to work on.
Markus