New install process

[Robert Millan]

On Mon, Sep 05, 2005 at 12:58:25AM +0200, Frederic Lehobey wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 06:28:53PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> 
> > Over the last few days I have done major changes on the install process for
> > Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.  Now the whole installation is MUCH simpler and easy to
> > understand.
> 
> > Please if you have a spare machine around, I'd appreciate some testing.  More
> > important than testing the install process itself, is checking that systems
> > installed with this method are usable.
> 
> I did it.  It was mostly successful.  I followed your documentation.
> 
> First, as I have a french azerty keyboard, I chose in the first
> installation menu the `French ISO (accent)' for `System Console
> Keymap'.  It was most useful in the first part of the freebsd
> installation (consider the consequences of confusing a and q...).  :-)
> Unfortunately this setting is not kept later, and I have not yet been
> able since to set again a french keyboard (console-data seems to have
> missing dependencies -- any workaround?).

Unfortunately the FreeBSD installer we're using doesn't know anything about
Debian setup, so all it does is untarring our base system.  I've managed to
make it run native-install (when switch to VT3) but that's all of it.

There's a package called "kbdcontrol" that you can use for keyboard mapping
setup.  I don't know how it works though.

Maybe native-install could set it up automaticaly (if someone sends a patch,
that is..).

> The only real issue I encountered was at the end of the Minimal
> installation.  As suggested by your docs, I answered No to all the
> questions at the end of the basic install (after I got the `successful
> install message') up to the choice of a root password.  There,
> whatever may be the characters I typed, the system stayed in some
> somewhat broken state.  Not any command work in the 4th virtual
> terminal (no ps, no reboot, no shutdown...).  I have not found any
> better way than (ugly) hard reset.

Please can you be more specific on what you did?  Specialy, I'd like to know
what did you do after native-install finished to run (in VT3), and the installer
sent you back to VT1.

Perhaps the instructions are not clear, but all you have to do at that point is
exiting the install process and reboot.  You don't have to set the root password
or anything untill you boot into Debian GNU/kFreeBSD natively.

> I had to fix myself /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts for the name I had
> chosen (needed for X).

I assume you chosed it in the FreeBSD installer interface?  (This isn't expected
to have any effect either).

> By the way, after X failures (while setting X) I got messages saying
> an other X was running (which was not supported by ps).  And the only
> way I found to get rid of these messages was a few more (ugly)
> reboots.

This is a generic Debian bug AFAIK.  You just need to remove /tmp/.X11*

> Thanks to all for your work and your documentation.

Thank you for your feedback!

-- 
Robert Millan