Re: Issues with current state of GNU/kFreeBSD
On Sun, Aug 09, 2009 at 01:39:59PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> now that I'm subscribed to this list, and tried out D-I on kFreeBSD (r60026),
> I want to inform you about some issues I experienced.
>
> ISSUES in Debian Installer
> ==========================
>
> D-I: [netcfg] manual network configuration fails
> ------------------------------------------------
> I don't know why, but manually configuring the network fails.
I never tried it, I'll try to see if I can reproduce the problem.
> D-I: [grub-installer] fails
> ----------------------------
> grub-installer in the menu fails, I don't know why. You can install
> grub-pc in /target and run grub-install there to get a bootable
> system.
This is a known problem, someone has to work on getting grub-installer
postinst script working.
> D-I: [partman] Should use slices
> ---------------------------------
> FreeBSD uses slices which contain multiple partitions. The
> first partition being /, the second one being swap by default.
>
> Debian installer should support slices just like it supports
> extended partitions. It should by default create one slice and
> the partitions inside this slice and not on the disk directly.
parted doesn't support slices, that's why slices are not used. I don't
think it is really an issue.
> D-I: [parted] parted_devices crashes
> [parman] Does not list partitions
> ---------------------------
> parted_devices crashes if the device contains UFS volumes
> outside of a slice. This causes partman to not list any
> partitions at all.
>
> This also means that you can't reinstall GNU/kFreeBSD at the
> moment, because it lists no partitions the second time.
I have a fix here that I will commit later today.
> D-I: Changes keyboard layout
> ----------------------------
> D-I seems to confuse the system in a way that pressing 'a' on
> the keyboard gives 'q' (and others).
I have been told the same, I'll try to reproduce it.
> Issues in the installed system
> ================================
>
> Installed: keyboard layouts missing
> ------------------------------------
> There appears to be no way to use a keyboard layout different
> than the standard US one.
Maybe related to the problem in the installer.
> Installed: Problems with localizations
> ----------------------------------------
> Localized messages display wrong characters for non-ASCII
> characters.
This is not specific at all to GNU/kFreeBSD, this and due to the fact
FreeBSD console currently doesn't support UTF-8. It should be fixed
with version 8.0.
> Installed: Filesystem of /proc should be procfs
> -------------------------------------
> The filesystem of /proc should be procfs and not linprocfs in
> order to be compatible to FreeBSD. linprocfs only emulates parts
> of a Linux 2.4 procfs and is not really useful. This is needed
> e.g. to get kbuild working, as it calls readlink() on
> /proc/curproc/file which is only available on procfs.
linprocfs is really useful, a lot of applications breaks without it.
> If this gets changed, /sys should maybe be dropped to, and both
> linux compatibility FS should be mounted somewhere in e.g.
> /var/lib/linux (i.e. /var/lib/linux/{sys,proc}).
This will break a lot of application looking in /proc and /sys for Linux
style files, not something we are going to change until all those
applications are fixed (aka in a few years).
> Other Stuff
> ===========
>
> VirtualBox 3.0 on GNU/kFreeBSD
> -------------------------------
> I'd like to have VirtualBox one GNU/kFreeBSD, as upstream already
> has support for FreeBSD. This will require changes to the kbuild
> package and the virtualbox-ose package. I have not talked to the
> maintainers yet, but I would take care of writing the patches.
>
> I already installed an IDE (Geany) on my kFreeBSD VM, so I can
> code on this. I will prepare the needed patches, send them to the
> BTS and will inform you once I'm finished.
>
Feel free to provide patches.
--
Aurelien Jarno GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73
aurelien@aurel32.net http://www.aurel32.net
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