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Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 01:30:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: robert@fledge.watson.org
Reply-To: robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org
To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@freebsd.org
Cc: robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org
Subject: sysinstall user creation--various things
X-Send-Pr-Version: 3.2

>Number:         14318
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       sysinstall(8): sysinstall upon install has some counter-intuitive features
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-sysinstall
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:  
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Wed Oct 13 22:40:00 PDT 1999
>Closed-Date:    
>Last-Modified:  Sat Jun 29 05:52:30 UTC 2013
>Originator:     Robert Watson
>Release:        FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386
>Organization:
>Environment:

3.3-RELEASE during install

>Description:

A few simple ones, just cosmetic but confused novice user...

- During post-configuration, the choice of adding users is given.  For some
reason, the sysinstall cui offers defaults to starting uid's at 1001 not
1000, which is what userland adduser seems to start at.  This is a minor
inconsistency that could cause confusiuon.

- Sanity checking is not performed on the home directory field in the
adduser area of sysinstall.  At the very least, it might make sense to
verify that a "/" is at the beginning of the directoryname.  Another thing
that might be nice is a "default home directory" popping up after the
username is entered, like the domain name popping up automatically when
a hostname is entered in the networking configuration.  My novice user
entered "robert" as the homedir, which simply failed to come into existence
causing him some confusion.  There is online help, but I'm not sure it
was advertised.

- During sysinstall, there are times when F1 may be pressed for help.
I don't believe this is advertised everywhere it is possible.

- Sysinstall doesn't provide a way to configure a hostname without
configuring networking.  Also, a hostname is prompted for on each
interface.  It seems like, given the hostname is a single kernel and
rc.conf variable, that perhaps it should be a seperate configuration
item.  The (Amnesiac) thing is cute though.

- Would be nice if sysinstall remembered what distributions are installed,
my novice user would go back occasionally and discover all the distributions
had "uninstalled themselves" while he was off adding packages.  This is
a more serious feature and probably isn't easy to address.

- In the sysinstall adduser screen, sanity checking is performed on the
shell field, but a list of valid shells is not presented to the user.  How
is the user to know where tcsh is if they are not familiar with FreeBSD's
disk layout?  I'm not sure a pullup is possible in our cui interface, but
something is probably desirable there--we know what the possible shells
are because we check before adding the user, so we could hopefully expose
that to the user somehow.  Another stumbling block for the novice user.

- In general, it seems like having a third [Help] button at the bottom
of each screen might be really useful in making the help more accessible.

- Use of the space bar and enter key is inconsistent--in some places to
select something, you use space (distributions, packages, etc..) to get
to submenus.  In other places, you use enter (desktop configuration) --
my novice user was puzzled by this at first, until I explained that the
first choice was space to select something, and if that didn't work, then
to try enter.  Also, the left-right and buttons at the bottom confused the
user.  This is, of course, fairly cosmetic and has to do with our cui,
but worth changing if we get the opportunity to do it easily :-).

- No description for ftp package category

- Netscape 46 package didn't install -- I assume it wanted a network to
download with, but given that this was a network-free machine, it didn't
work.  This was counter-intuitive and didn't provide feedback to the user
as to why there was a failure, nor did the package appear to be tagged as
requiring network access at install time.

>How-To-Repeat:

Take novice user, computer, and 3.3-RELEASE CDROM.  Place in oven at
350 degrees.  Cook until golden brown, or to taste.

>Fix:
	
Sorry no patches, but if you want a novice user I have several :-).
Watching a novice user install the system was fairly enlightening--I guess
I've always just worked around the counter-intuitisms of sysinstall, so
I didn't think of any of these as problems.  Go figure.

My plan is to apply my fresh novice users on each new prerelease CD
from now on.  Who knows, maybe it's useful...



>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
Responsible-Changed-From-To: freebsd-bugs->jkh 
Responsible-Changed-By: sheldonh 
Responsible-Changed-When: Thu Oct 14 07:29:32 PDT 1999 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
Jordan's Mr. Sysinstall. 

From: "Jay Krell" <jay.krell@cornell.edu>
To: <freebsd-gnats-submit@freebsd.org>,
	<robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org>
Cc:  
Subject: Re: bin/14318: sysinstall upon install has some counter-intuitive features
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 07:54:33 -0800

 I'm a novice user.
 >Use of the space bar and enter key is inconsistent
 
 That definitely caused me problems. Similarly, escape sometimes seemed to
 act like "press any key to proceed".
 
  - Jay
 
 
Responsible-Changed-From-To: jkh->eric 
Responsible-Changed-By: jkh 
Responsible-Changed-When: Thu Aug 30 17:10:52 PDT 2001 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
Mass move to Eric 

http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=12324 
Responsible-Changed-From-To: jkh->eric 
Responsible-Changed-By: jkh 
Responsible-Changed-When: Thu Aug 30 17:10:52 PDT 2001 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
Eric is a student and therefore expendable 

http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=14318 
Responsible-Changed-From-To: eric->freebsd-qa 
Responsible-Changed-By: eric 
Responsible-Changed-When: Mon Oct 1 11:59:50 PDT 2001 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
assign idle sysinstall bugs to freebsd-qa, as suggested by murray 

http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=14318 
Responsible-Changed-From-To: freebsd-qa->qa 
Responsible-Changed-By: johan 
Responsible-Changed-When: Sat Aug 24 19:14:52 PDT 2002 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
Use short names for mailing list to make searches    
using the web query form work with the shown responsible. 

This also makes open PRs show up in the summery mail. 


http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=14318 
Responsible-Changed-From-To: freebsd-bugs->randi 
Responsible-Changed-By: randi 
Responsible-Changed-When: Sat Jun 6 19:52:32 UTC 2009 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
Mine! Not sure how much of this still applies being as how it's been nearly 10 years, but I'll look into it.  

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=14318 
Responsible-Changed-From-To: randi->freebsd-sysinstall 
Responsible-Changed-By: linimon 
Responsible-Changed-When: Sat Jun 29 05:52:04 UTC 2013 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
back to mailing list. 

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=14318 
>Unformatted:
