On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 01:27:29PM +0200, Paul Slootman wrote:
> - I chose expert install. What's the difference with the normal install?
> I didn't really detect anything that was particularly "expert"...
The difference between "expert" and "normal" installation is just a
matter of debconf priority. Normal installations just show debconf
questions with priority high or critical. Expert adds medium on top of
that.
You should probably try a normal installation and see by yourself that
you'll probably need to answer less than 15 different questions to get a
fully operational desktop system.
> - After saying "no" to "do pc card services need to be started", I found it
> unexpected that I was asked for memory ranges to exclude for PCMCIA;
> I would have thought that the first question would mean I didn't need
> anything with PCMCIA.
Known issue, see #479391.
> - It was impossible to setup the disk layout I wanted:
> - root on raid1 over 2 partitions
> - ditto swap and /boot
> - /var and other things on LVM on RAID1
> […]
> In short, most of the configuration entered was not remembered when
> "writing to disk".
Known issues, see #391479, #391483, #393728, #398668, #475479. Should
be fixed before Lenny.
> - The question "should root be allowed to login" should indicate that this
> includes the console; I was thinking of ssh access. BTW, I think that
> offering to install an ssh server should also be asked, I expect that to
> always be there... which is a pain if you install the server somewhere
> and can't access it remotely.
Are you talking about the following template?
Allow login as root? If you choose not to allow root to log in, then
a user account will be created and given the power to become root
using the 'sudo' command.
I don't see how exacltly it could be improved, as it seems pretty
obvious to me that this is a system-wide setting.
An SSH server is already automatically installed when a system is
installed through an SSH connection (network-console). For other means
of installation, one can install the openssh-server once the
installation process is done through the same way the installation was
made (through classic console or serial connection).
> - After selecting the tasks I was hoping to be dumped into aptitude to
> fine-tune the packages; that didn't happen. Did I miss the choice for
> aptitude somewhere? I did choose "expert install", so I expect to be
> offered a bit more control...
AFAIK, you did not miss it. People who want fine tuning of their
packages usually unselect every tasks and start installing packages with
a plain base system after the first reboot.
> - I didn't get any chance to enter anything for the mail config, hence this
> is going out as from "paul@moordrecht.gps.nl" while it should be just
> "paul@gps.nl" for this system. I need to fix /etc/mailname...
> So please reply to paul@debian.org :-)
This used to be the case. Being offline, I can't point you to the
discussion which lead to this decision, but laptop and desktop users
usually don't need to configure a full mail daemon.
"dpkg-reconfigure exim4" can also be done after the first reboot.
> - After installation cron in the log that /etc/environment doesn't exist,
> which it doesn't.
>
> - The rescue boot also asks for hostname, domainname, country, etc.,
> so I was a bit worried that I was simply doing an install again.
> Why is that info necessary for a rescue console?
Location and language are asked because rescue mode is also localized
and having help messages in your native language is a desirable choice.
Same for keyboard layout. The network configuration is done because
rescue mode might need to retrieve installer components only available
from a Debian mirror.
IIRC, these are the only questions currently asked. Both newt and GTK+
frontend displays a label with "Rescue mode" on top of the screen.
Should another message be added in your opinion?
I am leaving this installation report to eventually discuss a little bit
more on those issue, but most of them are already known.
Cheers,
--
Jérémy Bobbio .''`.
lunar@debian.org : :Ⓐ : # apt-get install anarchism
`. `'`
`-
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