Re: Improving install partitioning

[phil@bolthole.com (Philip Brown)]

[ Matt Zimmerman writes ]
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 12:05:29PM +0100, Jan Martin Mathiassen wrote:
> 
> > oh, and while i'm uttering gibberish, i'm not sure *how* to improve it, but
> > the part of the install procedure where you partition the hard disks could
> > be improved. one should be able to mount the partitions as you create them,
> > instead of having to create them, exit the program, go to a menu, select a
> > menu item, rinse repeat. just a thought...
> 

>I usually create all of the partitions in one pass, exit cfdisk, and
>initialize and mount them one by one.  The only straightforward way I could
>see to improve this would be to tag the partitions with mount points (a la
>BSD-style disklabels), so you can specify everything at once.

Well, how about looking at it the other way: remove direct user interaction
with cfdisk altogether, in the default method.

Take a(nother) lesson from solaris:

o Show how much free disk space there is on each disk
o Have the person specify what partitions they want to be separate
o Have the person specify what disk they want it on, if there are multiple
  disks

Then have the installer automagically slice and dice up free space.
[and of course, remember to create vfstab appropriately ;-)]

Never show the cfdisk interface unless they specifically ask "Let me mess
with stuff by hand"