NetBSD Problem Report #44925

From www@NetBSD.org  Mon May  2 10:32:18 2011
Return-Path: <www@NetBSD.org>
Received: from mail.netbsd.org (mail.netbsd.org [204.152.190.11])
	by www.NetBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F4D263BBF8
	for <gnats-bugs@gnats.NetBSD.org>; Mon,  2 May 2011 10:32:18 +0000 (UTC)
Message-Id: <20110502103217.4267463B8AC@www.NetBSD.org>
Date: Mon,  2 May 2011 10:32:17 +0000 (UTC)
From: jason@pobox.com
Reply-To: jason@pobox.com
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Subject: base install doesn't come with a few things that'd be really really useful
X-Send-Pr-Version: www-1.0

>Number:         44925
>Category:       install
>Synopsis:       base install doesn't come with a few things that'd be really really useful
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    install-manager
>State:          open
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Mon May 02 10:35:00 +0000 2011
>Last-Modified:  Mon May 02 22:50:02 +0000 2011
>Originator:     jason andrade
>Release:        i386 5.1
>Organization:
RTFM Consulting
>Environment:
NetBSD 5.1 NetBSD 5.1 (GENERIC) #0: builds@b6.netbsd.org:/fooooo etc etc.. unfortunately virtualbox has no ability to cut and paste this information and i don't have the patience to try to type it in
>Description:
I've just completed a Ubuntu Server 11.04 install and then a NetBSD 5.1 one straight after.

I've used NetBSD in the distant past and i was pleasantly suprised to see how much nicer the install is.

That said, please consider whether the following would be possible:

o Some way to easily tell what was installed in the initial installation. e.g comp.tgz is not installed by default so no cvs to do anything.

o can a default shell be installed which has some tab completion and history ? or even stty ^H erase ? 

o it'd be really useful to have pkgsrc already setup and a one liner that said something like 'to install software run this which gives you a list'

All i could think about for now.  None of this is a big deal - just would be nice to build on how smooth the install process has gotten to by a couple of little things to make it so much more user friendly.

The alternative is of course to google/read documentation etc which i am doing but it's a little sad that someone with basic unix knowledge can't get very far in netbsd without having to do that rather than just poking at some commands - lets face it, most of us want to go straight to the packages/applications nowadays after the actual install goes smoothly.

regards,

-jason
>How-To-Repeat:

>Fix:

>Audit-Trail:
From: Matthew Mondor <mm_lists@pulsar-zone.net>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: install/44925: base install doesn't come with a few things
 that'd be really really useful
Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 18:46:25 -0400

 On Mon,  2 May 2011 10:35:00 +0000 (UTC)
 jason@pobox.com wrote:

 It probably would have been best to address every specific issue via
 its own PR.

 > o Some way to easily tell what was installed in the initial installation. e.g comp.tgz is not installed by default so no cvs to do anything.

 I think that installed sets leave a file containing the list of the
 installed in /etc/mtree/set.<name>; of course perhaps that eventually
 sysinst could see what's installed and show it if used a second time.

 That said, you can also use the
   tar xzpf <tarball>.tgz -C /
 command to install sets outside of sysinst, the one set you should
 beware is etc.tgz as it could overwrite existing configuration files.
 Make sure to include the p flag so that permissions of the extracted
 files be be applied properly.

 > o can a default shell be installed which has some tab completion and history ? or even stty ^H erase ? 

 Isn't /bin/sh the default nowadays?  That shell does support those
 features.  A directive equivalent to:

 case "$-" in *i*)
 	set -o emacs; set -o tabcomplete
 	;;
 esac

 Should however exist in an interactive-conditional in the .shrc (or the
 file specified via ENV).  Did the default profile/shrc files miss that
 once you made sure the user's shell was /bin/sh (settable via the chsh
 command)?

 Or perhaps that root still set to use /bin/csh?  I admit that I don't
 install new systems often using sysinst, but I would myself
 prefer /bin/sh as default shell including for root.

 > o it'd be really useful to have pkgsrc already setup and a one liner that said something like 'to install software run this which gives you a list'

 If I remember some other people would also like for pkg_add and pkgsrc
 support to be available via sysinst, with preset and custom package
 lists possible.  I'm not sure if a PR exists for this, though.

 Thanks for trying NetBSD and for suggesting improvements,
 -- 
 Matt

Home	PR Database Search