boot banner project

[/dev/null]

Hello any & all,
O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when FreeBSDers
see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be able
to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is the
premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the
following layout:
(a fixed width font required to view the layout correctly)
--------------------------------------------------------
| some |
| sort |
| of |
| graphic goes in this area |
|--------------------------------------------------------
| boot |
| |
| messages |
| |
| seen |
| |
| here |
| bla... |
| bla... |
| bla... |
---------------------------------------------------------

-Chris

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[/dev/null]

Post by /dev/null

Post by /dev/null
Hello any & all,
O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when

FreeBSDers

Post by /dev/null
see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be

able

Post by /dev/null
to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is

the

Post by /dev/null
premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the
(a fixed width font required to view the layout correctly)
--------------------------------------------------------
| some |
| sort |
| of |
| graphic goes in this area |
|--------------------------------------------------------
| boot |
| |
| messages |
| |
| seen |
| |
| here |
| bla... |
| bla... |
| bla... |
---------------------------------------------------------

Isn't this essentially what splash(4)is for?

At first it may seem that way. But unless I'm mistaken, it will only
allow
a graphic that covers the entire screen. So seeing the boot messages are
not an option except without the splash bitmap. I had hoped to provision
"layout" options and to provide for resolutions, and..., and...
Similar examples of what I am proposing are already available with Linux,
the FreeBSD macintosh project, the NetBSD macintosh, and others.
-Chris

According to the man page, pressing a key will remove the bitmap and allow
boot messages to be seen. Additionally, if you specify -c or -v as a boot
option, the bitmap will not show. Maybe a patch to splash(4) that would
allow for such things as size and placement?
Just my $.02

Well, that's what this is for. It's an RFC.

-Chris

-Glenn

Post by /dev/null

-Glenn

Post by /dev/null
-Chris

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[/dev/null]

Hello,
As this is an RFC (I'm sure you already know that).

Long answer:
I'm not quite sure. It will depend on the amount and content
of the comments. Technically, it may not start ever (because
everyone/ or nearly everyone says it SUX).

Short answer:
Too early for me to say.

_Chris

When are you starting the project?

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Andre Guibert de Bruet]

Post by /dev/null
Hello,
As this is an RFC (I'm sure you already know that).
I'm not quite sure. It will depend on the amount and content
of the comments. Technically, it may not start ever (because
everyone/ or nearly everyone says it SUX).
Too early for me to say.

I am not in favor of flashy boot screens and pretty ascii boot screens on
the simple basis that they violate POLA. They add complexity and no
functionality. I am of the opinion that the color beastie took things too
far already... ;-)

My $0.10,
Andy

PS: This email has been adjusted for inflation.

| Andre Guibert de Bruet | Enterprise Software Consultant >
| Silicon Landmark, LLC. | http://siliconlandmark.com/ >

[/dev/null]

Post by Andre Guibert de Bruet

Post by /dev/null
Hello,
As this is an RFC (I'm sure you already know that).
I'm not quite sure. It will depend on the amount and content
of the comments. Technically, it may not start ever (because
everyone/ or nearly everyone says it SUX).
Too early for me to say.

I am not in favor of flashy boot screens and pretty ascii boot screens on
the simple basis that they violate POLA. They add complexity and no
functionality. I am of the opinion that the color beastie took things too
far already... ;-)

You have a color one?! Where do you get it? I only have a white ASCII one.
Seriously tho, in the event there is any doubt. I firmly believe that
it should *always* be a matter of choice. One should always be able to
enable/ disable, add or remove. So, should there be any doubt, I intend
this - whatever it should become - to be something that can be added to
(or removed from) whatever is current. nuf said. ;)

-Chris

Post by Andre Guibert de Bruet
My $0.10,
Andy
PS: This email has been adjusted for inflation.
| Andre Guibert de Bruet | Enterprise Software Consultant >
| Silicon Landmark, LLC. | http://siliconlandmark.com/ >
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Christian Laursen]

Post by /dev/null
You have a color one?! Where do you get it? I only have a white ASCII one.

Put

loader_color="YES"

in /boot/loader.conf. :)

[/dev/null]

Well I don't believe it sucks. It's a good project. I'm also working
on a few projects that hopefully will add a few frills like linux. I
mounting file systems ok
network ok
Mysql failed
etc etc. The one thing you should keep in mind is that a lot of
people who use freebsd don't care about the "frills" that linux has
added. However what they fail to realize is that it attracts and
keeps users. I have been around FreeBSD for a long time
...almost....10 years...started as an admin. I had to install some
linux servers for work. I was impressed. The last time I used linux
was redhat 6.x. Until we start adding the "frills" especially ones
that are realatively easy (or seem easy) to do as well as disable we
will never have the user base. I'm actually about to star work on
1. Adding full read/write / nfs support for reiserfs 4
2. Total rewrite of sysinstall to be like Red Hat's Anaconda (graphical)

For ppl that have never installed FBSD b4 I think a GUI installer is a
must. But personally, the *only* thing I would change in the current
installer is better cursor handling. OK maybe I would also add a refresh
button - I hate it when the screen gets trashed from some console message.

3. FreeBSD Update (ala Red hat update / Windows update)

It's already available in the 5x series (and late 4?). It's called
portaudit and is the *BEST* implimentation for any OS I have ever used.
A "must have" for any FBSD user. Look in the ports/security section of
your local installation.

4. GUI Kernel configurator
5. GUI port manager (add / delete ports)

There are a few incarnations of this(ese) already available depending of
your windowmanager/ console choice.

6. Other Small System enhancements
If you want maybe we could create a group who's purpose is to create
system enhancements......let's come up with some projects work on them
and see if they are willing to commit them ........ think about it.

Not to sound as if I'm shunning you, but I think we're already in one -
this group, no? :)
I'll give it some thought.

-Chris

Post by /dev/null
Hello,
As this is an RFC (I'm sure you already know that).
I'm not quite sure. It will depend on the amount and content
of the comments. Technically, it may not start ever (because
everyone/ or nearly everyone says it SUX).
Too early for me to say.
_Chris

When are you starting the project?

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Brian Candler]

Post by /dev/null

2. Total rewrite of sysinstall to be like Red Hat's Anaconda (graphical)

For ppl that have never installed FBSD b4 I think a GUI installer is a
must. But personally, the *only* thing I would change in the current
installer is better cursor handling. OK maybe I would also add a refresh
button - I hate it when the screen gets trashed from some console message.

Have you looked at http://www.bsdinstaller.org/ ?

I've only looked at the web site, haven't tried it. But it looks like a cool
idea: separating out the installer functionality from the user interface, so
that you can easily plug in new interfaces (they have a CGI frontend
already). It might save re-inventing the wheel.

Post by /dev/null

3. FreeBSD Update (ala Red hat update / Windows update)

It's already available in the 5x series (and late 4?). It's called
portaudit and is the *BEST* implimentation for any OS I have ever used.
A "must have" for any FBSD user. Look in the ports/security section of
your local installation.

According to pkg-descr:

"portaudit provides a system to check if installed ports are listed in a
database of published security vulnerabilities.

After installation it will update this security database automatically and
include its reports in the output of the daily security run."

This doesn't sound like an updater of any sort. There's "portupgrade", but
of course that only handles software in the ports collection, not the O/S
itself.

I would like to be able to do a safe binary-only upgrade of the base FreeBSD
O/S. For it to be safe, it has to be able to *remove* things which were in
the old distribution but not in the new one. The current upgrade process
just untars the new distribution on top of whatever you have, and usually
leaves a mess behind to clean up.

This works with RPM-based O/Ses because each part of the O/S is itself a
package, and thus the package database records which files it contians.
Making the whole FreeBSD base system consist of 'packages' rather than just
plain tarballs might be one approach. It would also usefully record which
distribution sets you chose to install originally, which is information that
is also lost currently.

Oh, and I want the 'mergemaster' functionality to be available in a binary
upgrade too.

Post by /dev/null

4. GUI Kernel configurator

That wouldn't add any value for me. I moved from Linux to FreeBSD several
years ago, and one of the things I prefer about FreeBSD is that the kernel
configuration and build process is *so* straightforward. Single text file to
edit; that's it.

Post by /dev/null

5. GUI port manager (add / delete ports)

There are a few incarnations of this(ese) already available depending of
your windowmanager/ console choice.

As I'm sure you know, sysinstall has this functionality already. sysinstall
isn't pretty, but it kind-of works. The biggest problem I find when newbie
FreeBSD users are trying it is having to remember to hit "Tab" to get to the
right places. Especially screens like this:

[_X_] Selection 1
[ X ] Selection 2
[ ] Selection 3

[ OK ] [ Cancel ]

People think they can just hit Enter to select 'OK', but actually it toggles
Selection 1 off. Maybe that's the same point you made about "improved cursor
handling".

Post by /dev/null

6. Other Small System enhancements
If you want maybe we could create a group who's purpose is to create
system enhancements......let's come up with some projects work on them
and see if they are willing to commit them ........ think about it.

I remember reading an article by Jordan Hubbard a couple of years ago
explaining the deficiencies of the current installation/upgrade system, and
suggesting what features a next generation system should have. Anybody
remember where it was?

Regards,

Brian.

[John Sconiers]

What is the goal of FreeBSD, it's user community, it's developer and
it's supporting companies / businesses , etc? FreeBSD offers advanced
networking, performance, security and compatibility features today
....or at least that's whats on the web page but is one of the goals
to increase it's user and developer base? Is this happening? Several
years ago after being a FreeBSD fan / contributor since ~1995 I left
FreeBSD because I didn't have the time with kids and all. During that
time I was a unix / storage ps guy for two fortune 500 companies (One
was a vendor of another Unix OS). I was also "forced" to work with
Linux in production settings. I come back ~three years later and on
the surface things haven't changed. The boot banner, installation
program, etc, etc, hasn't changed. I know there have been many
updates and advanced features added to FreeBSD. Plainly put we need to
include items such as the boot banner not only becasue it can be done
but because it can attract and keep more users. Adding less then a
meg here or there is not bloat. Unless of course the goal is to
create an advanced operating system unable to get / keep users.

My $.02

Post by /dev/null
Hello,
As this is an RFC (I'm sure you already know that).
I'm not quite sure. It will depend on the amount and content
of the comments. Technically, it may not start ever (because
everyone/ or nearly everyone says it SUX).
Too early for me to say.

On this proposal, I think that some graphic banner while booting could
be beautiful to the eye, but quite void in usefullness. I'm not against
it, but can't see any real advantage. Anyway if someone feels like
spending some time on this feature and the results does not bring any
regression to the system I don't see why it should not be offered as an
option.
On the other hand I think some tidying up in the rc sctripts boot
messages would really REALLY be a good idea. I don't mean anything
drastic, just that in 5.x(as was altready pointed out) the output is a
bit messy, and even if I can sort it out uite clearly out of habit, it
would be better if it was a bit more structured and ordered.
My 2 cents...nothing more, nothing less.
--

[Chris]

John Sconiers wrote:
...

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat. Unless of course the goal is to
create an advanced operating system unable to get / keep users.
My $.02

The problem is this; if everyone keeps adding "less then a meg here or
there" then you DO end up with bloat.

Where to you draw the line? How much is too much? To me, I would rather
add that less then a meg here and there to the core OS ... Not to
something that (to me) does not need to look perdy.

... and my .02

[John Sconiers]

Do you want to get / keep new users, compete wth other operating
systems, etc....

Post by Chris
...

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat. Unless of course the goal is to
create an advanced operating system unable to get / keep users.
My $.02

The problem is this; if everyone keeps adding "less then a meg here or
there" then you DO end up with bloat.
Where to you draw the line? How much is too much? To me, I would rather
add that less then a meg here and there to the core OS ... Not to
something that (to me) does not need to look perdy.
... and my .02
--
Best regards,
Chris
If reproducibility may be a problem conduct the
test only once.

[Chris]

Post by John Sconiers

Post by Chris
...

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat. Unless of course the goal is to
create an advanced operating system unable to get / keep users.
My $.02

The problem is this; if everyone keeps adding "less then a meg here or
there" then you DO end up with bloat.
Where to you draw the line? How much is too much? To me, I would rather
add that less then a meg here and there to the core OS ... Not to
something that (to me) does not need to look perdy.
... and my .02
--
Best regards,
Chris
If reproducibility may be a problem conduct the
test only once.

Do you want to get / keep new users, compete wth other operating
systems, etc....

Of course - but NOT at the expense for the OS itself. The banner is only
seen once. It does not have to be perdy to attract users.

If that's the case, if it needs to be perdy to attract users - then
(speaking for myself) do you want that flavor of user?

Are you not at that point trying to emulate a Windows-ee look? As I
said, I care more about the quality of the OS.

[Scott Long]

Post by Chris

Post by John Sconiers

Post by Chris
...

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat. Unless of course the goal is to
create an advanced operating system unable to get / keep users.
My $.02

The problem is this; if everyone keeps adding "less then a meg here or
there" then you DO end up with bloat.
Where to you draw the line? How much is too much? To me, I would rather
add that less then a meg here and there to the core OS ... Not to
something that (to me) does not need to look perdy.
... and my .02
--
Best regards,
Chris
If reproducibility may be a problem conduct the
test only once.

Do you want to get / keep new users, compete wth other operating
systems, etc....

Of course - but NOT at the expense for the OS itself. The banner is only
seen once. It does not have to be perdy to attract users.
If that's the case, if it needs to be perdy to attract users - then
(speaking for myself) do you want that flavor of user?
Are you not at that point trying to emulate a Windows-ee look? As I
said, I care more about the quality of the OS.

It's pretty lame to make technical decisions based on schoolyard
politics of who is and isn't cool enough to play with our to
toys. Software projects with conceited attitudes rarely survive.

Scott

[/dev/null]

First, I'd like to say; It's great to see so much passion regarding an OS.
It reminds me of the olden days when Mac vs. PeeCee camps were so
prevelent.
...

Post by Chris

Post by John Sconiers

Post by Chris
...

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat. Unless of course the goal is to
create an advanced operating system unable to get / keep users.
My $.02

The problem is this; if everyone keeps adding "less then a meg here or
there" then you DO end up with bloat.
Where to you draw the line? How much is too much? To me, I would rather
add that less then a meg here and there to the core OS ... Not to
something that (to me) does not need to look perdy.
... and my .02
--
Best regards,
Chris
If reproducibility may be a problem conduct the
test only once.

Do you want to get / keep new users, compete wth other operating
systems, etc....

Of course - but NOT at the expense for the OS itself. The banner is only
seen once. It does not have to be perdy to attract users.
If that's the case, if it needs to be perdy to attract users - then
(speaking for myself) do you want that flavor of user?

Is this bigotry, or racism? I can never remember which one means which.
Anyway, WTFAY to decide whom is allowed to use FBSD anyway?!

Post by Chris
Are you not at that point trying to emulate a Windows-ee look? As I
said, I care more about the quality of the OS.

You know, when you live at the console as long as I do every day. A little
"eye candy" can go a l o n g way.

-Chris (H.)

Post by Chris
--
Best regards,
Chris
The spot you are scrubbing on glassware is always on
the other side.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Chris]

Post by /dev/null
First, I'd like to say; It's great to see so much passion regarding an OS.
It reminds me of the olden days when Mac vs. PeeCee camps were so
prevelent.
...

Yes. It's presenting ideas, reasons, suggestions. Thus far tho - I have
gotten far worse replies via email then what has made it here on the list.

Sorta reminds me of the NetBSD "discussion" on the new *cough* mascot
*cough*

Post by /dev/null

Post by Chris

Post by John Sconiers

Post by Chris
...

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat. Unless of course the goal is to
create an advanced operating system unable to get / keep users.
My $.02

The problem is this; if everyone keeps adding "less then a meg here or
there" then you DO end up with bloat.
Where to you draw the line? How much is too much? To me, I would rather
add that less then a meg here and there to the core OS ... Not to
something that (to me) does not need to look perdy.
... and my .02
--
Best regards,
Chris
If reproducibility may be a problem conduct the
test only once.

Do you want to get / keep new users, compete wth other operating
systems, etc....

Of course - but NOT at the expense for the OS itself. The banner is only
seen once. It does not have to be perdy to attract users.
If that's the case, if it needs to be perdy to attract users - then
(speaking for myself) do you want that flavor of user?

Is this bigotry, or racism? I can never remember which one means which.
Anyway, WTFAY to decide whom is allowed to use FBSD anyway?!

I'm not - Read betwix the () - "Speaking for myself". That means, it's
my opinion. People seem to miss that point. Either that or they read
what they want it to say.

*Shrug*

Post by /dev/null

Post by Chris
Are you not at that point trying to emulate a Windows-ee look? As I
said, I care more about the quality of the OS.

You know, when you live at the console as long as I do every day. A little
"eye candy" can go a l o n g way.
-Chris (H.)

As long as it's not needed bloat. I rather like what one user stated.
Make it an option, or a port.

To me, (read that again, to me) I would prefer a choice.

[cpghost]

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat.

It is a mistake to assume that memory is cheap and always easily
available and/or upgradable. There are quite a lot of embedded
systems out there, that run FreeBSD out-of-the-box, without the
need to tweak or manually remove all that unnecessary eye candy.
Such systems come with RAM soldered on-board, so they are
impossible to upgrade.

If you really want a GUIfied installer (and please remember that
some hardware like Soekris boxes don't even have VGA circuitery!),
then please only as a port (that would create a custom boot image),
or as an optional add-on. The default install should still be possible
over serial line and on striped down hardware.

The same holds true for boot banners: not every hardware out there
has hires graphics capabilities.

Regards,
-cpghost.

[John Sconiers]

We should be able to have both in a unified installer / banner. The
same way Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, Novell, etc.....have both.....or am
I missing something........

JOHN

Post by cpghost

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat.

It is a mistake to assume that memory is cheap and always easily
available and/or upgradable. There are quite a lot of embedded
systems out there, that run FreeBSD out-of-the-box, without the
need to tweak or manually remove all that unnecessary eye candy.
Such systems come with RAM soldered on-board, so they are
impossible to upgrade.
If you really want a GUIfied installer (and please remember that
some hardware like Soekris boxes don't even have VGA circuitery!),
then please only as a port (that would create a custom boot image),
or as an optional add-on. The default install should still be possible
over serial line and on striped down hardware.
The same holds true for boot banners: not every hardware out there
has hires graphics capabilities.
Regards,
-cpghost.
--
Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/

[Darrel]

Post by John Sconiers
We should be able to have both in a unified installer / banner. The
same way Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, Novell, etc.....have both.....or am
I missing something........
JOHN

I installed Mac OS X a few minutes ago.

Although I found FreeBSD install to be unintuitive at first, I prefer it
to the current Apple install.

Darrel

[Mike Edenfield]

Post by Darrel

Post by John Sconiers
We should be able to have both in a unified installer / banner. The
same way Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, Novell, etc.....have both.....or am
I missing something........
JOHN

I installed Mac OS X a few minutes ago.
Although I found FreeBSD install to be unintuitive at first, I prefer it
to the current Apple install.

And it could be worse... it could be Gentoo.

[Chuck Robey]

Post by Mike Edenfield

Post by Darrel

Post by John Sconiers
We should be able to have both in a unified installer / banner. The
same way Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, Novell, etc.....have both.....or am
I missing something........
JOHN

I installed Mac OS X a few minutes ago.
Although I found FreeBSD install to be unintuitive at first, I prefer
it to the current Apple install.

And it could be worse... it could be Gentoo.

Gentoo is bad, but believe me, in Linux, there's much worse. I just
don't like folks jumping on Gentoo, 'cause I so much like their /etc stuff.

[/dev/null]

You know, all this chatter is moot without code. Those of you who feel
so strongly about this, go and write your interface. Then let the best
one take over the world.
Until then, you're just debating the color of a bikeshed that you'll
never get around to actually building. (Which is why I haven't taken
part,

This would be the second time you haven't "taken part". If memory serves
me correctly.

-Chris H.

that and I really couldn't care less about this particular subject; the
current installation interface is just fine as far as I'm concerned.)
--
Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/
http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[/dev/null]

FWIW, the project *intends* to make itself an *option*, not something that
that needs to be disabled - which I think would be irresponsible in this
case.

-Chris H.

Post by cpghost

Adding less then a meg here or there is not bloat.

It is a mistake to assume that memory is cheap and always easily
available and/or upgradable. There are quite a lot of embedded
systems out there, that run FreeBSD out-of-the-box, without the
need to tweak or manually remove all that unnecessary eye candy.
Such systems come with RAM soldered on-board, so they are
impossible to upgrade.
If you really want a GUIfied installer (and please remember that
some hardware like Soekris boxes don't even have VGA circuitery!),
then please only as a port (that would create a custom boot image),
or as an optional add-on. The default install should still be possible
over serial line and on striped down hardware.
The same holds true for boot banners: not every hardware out there
has hires graphics capabilities.
Regards,
-cpghost.
--
Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[c***@cordula.ws]

Post by /dev/null

Post by cpghost
The same holds true for boot banners: not every hardware out there
has hires graphics capabilities.

FWIW, the project *intends* to make itself an *option*, not something that
that needs to be disabled - which I think would be irresponsible in this
case.

Please don't top post.

Yes, there's nothing wrong with that. As long as the default still
installs over PXE, serial etc... (think rack mounted U1/U2 headless
servers as yet another typical platform that a lot of us manage by
the hundreds).

However, there's no reason why this should be part of the official
source tree. Use a port for optional kernel or bootloader stuff.

IMHO, the easiest way to achieve this, would be to write a port
that creates a custom ISO, with that (hypothetical) bells and
whistles GUI installer/boot prompt and a custom kernel with
your extension. Something like sysutils/freesbie port...
sysutils/eyecandy perhaps? ;)

Happy hacking.

Cheers,
-cpghost.

[Brian Candler]

Post by John Sconiers
Several
years ago after being a FreeBSD fan / contributor since ~1995 I left
FreeBSD because I didn't have the time with kids and all. During that
time I was a unix / storage ps guy for two fortune 500 companies (One
was a vendor of another Unix OS). I was also "forced" to work with
Linux in production settings. I come back ~three years later and on
the surface things haven't changed. The boot banner, installation
program, etc, etc, hasn't changed.

Personally I find that to be a big plus, not a minus.

One of the reasons I ditched Linux several years ago was the way Linux
shifts constantly. A good example is the firewalling code: once upon a time
there was ipfw. Then that was replaced by ipfwadm. Then that was discarded,
and replaced by ipchains. Which in turn was discarded and replaced by
iptables. (Or was that the other way round? I don't follow it closely these
days)

That's not to say the FreeBSD sysinstall is perfect and couldn't do with a
radical shake-up - it certainly could, as it is the primary administration
interface for a large set of users, and has many problems. But I'd vote for
an overhaul of that rather than a colour boot banner any day.

Post by John Sconiers
I know there have been many
updates and advanced features added to FreeBSD.

Absolutely. There's really superb stuff which makes the system more powerful
and easier to administer, like the dynamic /dev filesystem and the GEOM
layer.

Would a pretty boot screen make my system easier to administer? Probably
not, and if it didn't work down a serial console then it would be a
retrograde step.

I believe that FreeBSD aims primarily to be a server O/S, not a desktop O/S.
Of course it makes a perfectly good desktop too (as my own desktop and
laptop will testify), but any new feature needs to consider its utility in a
server environment first, I believe.

Regards,

Brian.

[Toxa]

Post by Brian Candler
Absolutely. There's really superb stuff which makes the system more powerful
and easier to administer, like the dynamic /dev filesystem and the GEOM
layer.
Would a pretty boot screen make my system easier to administer? Probably
not, and if it didn't work down a serial console then it would be a
retrograde step.

Very well spoken. My respects to you.

[Randy Bush]

Post by Brian Candler

Several years ago after being a FreeBSD fan / contributor since ~1995 I
left FreeBSD because I didn't have the time with kids and all. During
that time I was a unix / storage ps guy for two fortune 500 companies
(One was a vendor of another Unix OS). I was also "forced" to work with
Linux in production settings. I come back ~three years later and on the
surface things haven't changed. The boot banner, installation program,
etc, etc, hasn't changed.

Personally I find that to be a big plus, not a minus.
One of the reasons I ditched Linux several years ago was the way Linux
shifts constantly. A good example is the firewalling code: once upon a
time there was ipfw. Then that was replaced by ipfwadm. Then that was
discarded, and replaced by ipchains. Which in turn was discarded and
replaced by iptables. (Or was that the other way round? I don't follow it
closely these days)

yep. another way: this sounds as if you see freebsd as a workhorse
production system as opposed to a hobby where the more of your time
it absorbs the better it is.

randy

[Brian Candler]

Post by Randy Bush

Post by Brian Candler
One of the reasons I ditched Linux several years ago was the way Linux
shifts constantly. A good example is the firewalling code: once upon a
time there was ipfw. Then that was replaced by ipfwadm. Then that was
discarded, and replaced by ipchains. Which in turn was discarded and
replaced by iptables. (Or was that the other way round? I don't follow it
closely these days)

yep. another way: this sounds as if you see freebsd as a workhorse
production system as opposed to a hobby where the more of your time
it absorbs the better it is.

Yes, that's a fair summary. However, historically there was a big up-front
investment in FreeBSD until you get to that point.

I think this is much less so nowadays. In particular, the handbook is
excellent, and a lot of essential utilities which you had to install as
add-ons are now included as standard (e.g. gzip, tar with -z flag)

Now the only essential package to install is a POSIX shell with interactive
command history - i.e. "bash" - and it looks like /bin/sh has now gained
that capability too, although sadly not tab-completion.

It's still fair to say that the tools for [install, upgrade, configure] have
a number of problems, especially for those new to FreeBSD.

Regards,

Brian.

[Brian Candler]

Post by Brian Candler
Now the only essential package to install is a POSIX shell with interactive
command history - i.e. "bash" - and it looks like /bin/sh has now gained
that capability too, although sadly not tab-completion.

tcsh is in the base system and has that capability.

Except:

(1) it's not enabled by default (you need "set autolist", which I only
discovered recently)

(2) it's not a POSIX shell.

For me, (2) is serious. I don't want to use a different syntax for
redirecting I/O, setting environment variables and looping over arguments,
just to get tab-completion.

I have done quite a lot of teaching of FreeBSD to newbies (both Unix newbies
and ex-Linux users). It's a source of frustration that root's shell is
different to a normal user's shell, and also that root's shell is not POSIX.
Most Linux distributions solve this simply by using bash for both.

Now that /bin/sh has command history, I'd definitely vote for that to be
made the default shell for root in FreeBSD-6, and then csh can be left to
die in peace as it should have done years ago :-)

Regards,

Brian.

[Charles Swiger]

Post by Brian Candler
(2) it's not a POSIX shell.
For me, (2) is serious. I don't want to use a different syntax for
redirecting I/O, setting environment variables and looping over arguments,
just to get tab-completion.

[ ... ]

Post by Brian Candler
Now that /bin/sh has command history, I'd definitely vote for that to be
made the default shell for root in FreeBSD-6, and then csh can be left to
die in peace as it should have done years ago :-)

Agreed. I consider it a serious misfortune that FreeBSD doesn't use
/bin/sh as root's shell. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fix,
so I haven't spent my time complaining about this. :-)

[Warner Losh]

Post by Charles Swiger
Agreed. I consider it a serious misfortune that FreeBSD doesn't use
/bin/sh as root's shell. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fix,
so I haven't spent my time complaining about this. :-)

All BSDs have, since a very long time ago, used /bin/csh as root's
shell.

Warner

[Brian Candler]

Post by Warner Losh

Post by Charles Swiger
Agreed. I consider it a serious misfortune that FreeBSD doesn't use
/bin/sh as root's shell. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fix,
so I haven't spent my time complaining about this. :-)

All BSDs have, since a very long time ago, used /bin/csh as root's
shell.

OpenBSD appears to use ksh, which is a POSIX shell:
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/etc/master.passwd?rev=1.47&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup

[Charles Swiger]

Post by Warner Losh

Post by Charles Swiger
Agreed. I consider it a serious misfortune that FreeBSD doesn't use
/bin/sh as root's shell. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fix,
so I haven't spent my time complaining about this. :-)

All BSDs have, since a very long time ago, used /bin/csh as root's
shell.

NEXTSTEP never did; and neither does OS X:

9-cube# nidump passwd . | grep root
root:********:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/private/var/root:/bin/sh
daemon:*:1:1::0:0:System Services:/var/root:/usr/bin/false
10-cube# uname -a
Darwin cube.pkix.net 7.9.0 Darwin Kernel Version 7.9.0: Wed Mar 30
20:11:17 PST 2005; root:xnu/xnu-517.12.7.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power
Macintosh powerpc

Likewise for the majority of UNIX systems I am familiar with (Solaris,
Ultrix, HP/UX). In the case of Linux, or a few other systems, they
would use a POSIX shell like bash or ksh instead, which are almost
entirely backwards-compatible with /bin/sh.

[Warner Losh]

Post by Charles Swiger

Post by Warner Losh

Post by Charles Swiger
Agreed. I consider it a serious misfortune that FreeBSD doesn't use
/bin/sh as root's shell. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fix,
so I haven't spent my time complaining about this. :-)

All BSDs have, since a very long time ago, used /bin/csh as root's
shell.

Nexstep is mach based, not BSD based. OS X is FreeBSD based, so
clearly they changed it :-)

Post by Charles Swiger
Likewise for the majority of UNIX systems I am familiar with (Solaris,
Ultrix, HP/UX). In the case of Linux, or a few other systems, they
would use a POSIX shell like bash or ksh instead, which are almost
entirely backwards-compatible with /bin/sh.

Ultrix/mips and Ultrix/VAX did have /bin/csh as their root shell, at
least in early versions that I used in the late 1980's. Solaris is
SYSV based with some BSD bits added to that base, so isn't of BSD
orgin. HP/UX likewise.

I'm not looking for a catalog of systems. I'm telling you why
we are where we are today, and why things haven't changed: There's
really no need and inertial keeps things BSDish. Most people never
use the root shell directly, and all shell scripts are /bin/sh
anyway...

It truely is one of those things that just doesn't matter at all.

Warner

[Charles Swiger]

Post by Warner Losh
Nexstep is mach based, not BSD based.

I've seen NEXTSTEP listed in some BSD family trees, and not in others.

NEXTSTEP, or NeXTSTEP, or NextStep, (the all-caps is easiest, and makes
publishers happier) was a BSD-4.3-reno userland, libc, and BSD system
call layer as part of a Mach kernel, intermediate between the CMU Mach
2.0 and 2.5 releases, lightly salted with a few SysV-ism's from Sun
(who also provided the code for RPC, NFS, and NIS).

I still have a 33MHz NeXT TurboStation on my desk. It makes a very
nice greyscale display for handling lots of Terminal windows logged
into other machines for monitoring and remote CLI administration.
NEXTSTEP is a BSD-based Unix.

Post by Warner Losh
OS X is FreeBSD based, so clearly they changed it :-)

Since neither of us are nitpicking :-), be aware that OS X (aka
"Rhapsody" at the time) was originally derived mostly from stock
BSD-4.4lite and NetBSD by Wilfredo Sanchez, Justin, and others on
Apple's BSD team-- NetBSD had better portability towards PPC, and a
lower integration threshold, since the FreeBSD sources are more tightly
integrated and somewhat more difficult to migrate. Other parts came
from OpenBSD, and FreeBSD, and since then, OS X has tracked FreeBSD
more closely. [1]

Perhaps Jordan Hubbard has something to do with that, too.

Post by Warner Losh

Post by Charles Swiger
Likewise for the majority of UNIX systems I am familiar with (Solaris,
Ultrix, HP/UX). In the case of Linux, or a few other systems, they
would use a POSIX shell like bash or ksh instead, which are almost
entirely backwards-compatible with /bin/sh.

Ultrix/mips and Ultrix/VAX did have /bin/csh as their root shell, at
least in early versions that I used in the late 1980's. Solaris is
SYSV based with some BSD bits added to that base, so isn't of BSD
orgin. HP/UX likewise.

I infer that POSIX compliance is not very important to you.

Post by Warner Losh
I'm not looking for a catalog of systems. I'm telling you why
we are where we are today, and why things haven't changed: There's
really no need and inertial keeps things BSDish. Most people never
use the root shell directly, and all shell scripts are /bin/sh
anyway...

The fact that the /etc/rc scripts, cron, and similar tools involving
root's environment are all run using /bin/sh is one of the primary
reasons why root shell ought to be /bin/sh. There are newgroup FAQs
for various platforms which recommend against changing root's shell
from being a /bin/sh.
--
-Chuck

[1]: I'm quite familiar with this history, since at the time I had a
Darwin commit bit because I submitted a security bugfix for a race
dereferencing ../ in namei(), IIRC. And I did a little bit in libc--
fixed some printf problems with %g and buffer overflow checking with
snprintf()-- and with lint and the Makefiles, handling includes and
shared library versioning when building stuff to understand framework
layout, but Darwin wasn't self-hosting at the time (at least not
without wizard-level knowledge of how to integrate the pieces), so I've
spent more time with FreeBSD and NetBSD since then.

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <***@mac.com>
Charles Swiger <***@mac.com> writes:
: I infer that POSIX compliance is not very important to you.

I have POSIX_ME_HARDER defined in my environement :-)

POSIX compliance for POSIX compliance sake isn't a goal.

: > I'm not looking for a catalog of systems. I'm telling you why
: > we are where we are today, and why things haven't changed: There's
: > really no need and inertial keeps things BSDish. Most people never
: > use the root shell directly, and all shell scripts are /bin/sh
: > anyway...
:
: The fact that the /etc/rc scripts, cron, and similar tools involving
: root's environment are all run using /bin/sh is one of the primary
: reasons why root shell ought to be /bin/sh. There are newgroup FAQs
: for various platforms which recommend against changing root's shell
: from being a /bin/sh.

That doesn't follow. All my shell scripts run /bin/sh, yet my default
shell is /bin/tcsh.

But like I've said twice now: There's lots of bigger problems in the
tree, and a change like this could break things. There's enough
breakage in the tree now.

Warner

[Charles Swiger]

Post by M. Warner Losh
: The fact that the /etc/rc scripts, cron, and similar tools involving
: root's environment are all run using /bin/sh is one of the primary
: reasons why root shell ought to be /bin/sh. There are newgroup FAQs
: for various platforms which recommend against changing root's shell
: from being a /bin/sh.
That doesn't follow.

Do FreeBSD users ever have problems setting up cron jobs because their
interactive environment and cron's are not the same?

Post by M. Warner Losh
All my shell scripts run /bin/sh, yet my default shell is /bin/tcsh.

Sure; lots of people prefer another shell for interactive use. It's
not hard to do "exec tcsh", or put that in ~root/.profile, hopefully
wrapped in a test for whether the shell is interactive. I have a
.cshrc floating around which has this near the end:

# skip remaining setup if not an interactive shell
if ($?USER == 0 || $?prompt == 0) exit

...and the end of a .login which looks like:

# Note: this section is for interactive shells.
case $- in *i*)
eval `tset -s` 2> /dev/null
if [ ! -f .hushlogin ]; then

# IMPORTANT: place commands that might produce output here.
quota -q
mesg y
msgs -fp 2> /dev/null

# allow the user to break the Message-Of-The-Day display.
#trap "trap '' 2" 2
#/bin/cat -s /etc/motd
#trap "" 2

fi
esac

trap 2 3

Put an "exec tcsh" in there instead of the MOTD code (which clearly
isn't needed on FreeBSD)....

Post by M. Warner Losh
But like I've said twice now: There's lots of bigger problems in the
tree, and a change like this could break things. There's enough
breakage in the tree now.

Data point: I've been running /bin/sh as root's shell on a bunch of
machines with zero issues since 4.0.

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <***@mac.com>
Charles Swiger <***@mac.com> writes:
: On May 4, 2005, at 8:51 PM, M. Warner Losh wrote:
: > : The fact that the /etc/rc scripts, cron, and similar tools involving
: > : root's environment are all run using /bin/sh is one of the primary
: > : reasons why root shell ought to be /bin/sh. There are newgroup FAQs
: > : for various platforms which recommend against changing root's shell
: > : from being a /bin/sh.
: >
: > That doesn't follow.
:
: Do FreeBSD users ever have problems setting up cron jobs because their
: interactive environment and cron's are not the same?

Not likely. However, you are arguing for a change, while I'm just
telling you why things are the way they are historically.

: > All my shell scripts run /bin/sh, yet my default shell is /bin/tcsh.
:
: Sure; lots of people prefer another shell for interactive use.

ok. We're done. It is a preference. Have a nice day.

: > But like I've said twice now: There's lots of bigger problems in the
: > tree, and a change like this could break things. There's enough
: > breakage in the tree now.
:
: Data point: I've been running /bin/sh as root's shell on a bunch of
: machines with zero issues since 4.0.

I know people that have been running it since 1.0 that way. However,
as you said above "lots of people prefer another shell for interactive
use."

Anyway, this is my last post to his subthread. Please do not confuse
a historical explaination as advocacy for a specific thing.

Have a nice day, you hear?

Warner

[Charles Swiger]

Post by M. Warner Losh
Anyway, this is my last post to his subthread. Please do not confuse
a historical explaination as advocacy for a specific thing.
Have a nice day, you hear?

Loud and clear. I'm not interested in debating opinions, either.

Please don't confuse a correction of factual misstatements [1] with
advocacy.

[Scott Long]

Post by Warner Losh

Post by Charles Swiger
Agreed. I consider it a serious misfortune that FreeBSD doesn't use
/bin/sh as root's shell. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fix,
so I haven't spent my time complaining about this. :-)

All BSDs have, since a very long time ago, used /bin/csh as root's
shell.

OSX used csh by default until the 10.3 series release. You can still
(thankfully) select it. IMHO, csh/tcsh is superior for interactive
use, and bash/ksh is superior for scripting. It's amazing what happens
when you pick the right tool for the job; hammers are vastly superior
at pounding nails, while screw drivers are vastly superior at turning
screws.

Scott

[Brian Candler]

Post by Brian Candler
Now that /bin/sh has command history,

/bin/sh in FreeBSD has *always* had command history.

Sorry for being inexact - I meant being able to press cursor up and edit the
previous line.

Hmm. Maybe just the magic "set -o emacs" was missing.

[Powers up old FreeBSD 4.6.2 laptop]

Argh. Yes that was it. But strangely, /bin/sh now seems to do that by
default on my 5-STABLE box.

Poking around - I see I have "set -o emacs" in ~/.shrc, and this came from
/usr/local/share/dot.shrc. On the 4.6.2 box, /usr/share/skel/dot.shrc has
that line commented out. Looking at CVS, this change was made in July 2002.

However, I was using freshly-installed FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE in a workshop a
couple of weeks ago, and accounts which the students created using 'pw
useradd <user> -m' didn't have working command history. I'll need to dig
further to find out why, and what they should have done to fix it.

Anyway, just shows you learn something new every day. All this time I've
been telling people they should install bash to get interactive command
history, but it looks like there's a much simpler answer :-(

Thanks for the pointer.

Regards,

Brian.

[/dev/null]

Post by /dev/null
Hello,
As this is an RFC (I'm sure you already know that).
I'm not quite sure. It will depend on the amount and content
of the comments. Technically, it may not start ever (because
everyone/ or nearly everyone says it SUX).
Too early for me to say.

On this proposal, I think that some graphic banner while booting could
be beautiful to the eye, but quite void in usefullness. I'm not against
it, but can't see any real advantage. Anyway if someone feels like
spending some time on this feature and the results does not bring any
regression to the system I don't see why it should not be offered as an
option.
On the other hand I think some tidying up in the rc sctripts boot
messages would really REALLY be a good idea.

Indeed, this was brought up before and I would be *more* than happy to
concentrate my efforts there first (instead?). Maybe I'll start a new
RFC for it. Good idea?

I don't mean anything
drastic, just that in 5.x(as was altready pointed out) the output is a
bit messy, and even if I can sort it out uite clearly out of habit, it
would be better if it was a bit more structured and ordered.
My 2 cents...nothing more, nothing less.
--

-Chris
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Glenn Dawson]

Post by /dev/null
Hello any & all,
O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when FreeBSDers
see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be able
to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is the
premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the
(a fixed width font required to view the layout correctly)
--------------------------------------------------------
| some |
| sort |
| of |
| graphic goes in this area |
|--------------------------------------------------------
| boot |
| |
| messages |
| |
| seen |
| |
| here |
| bla... |
| bla... |
| bla... |
---------------------------------------------------------

Isn't this essentially what splash(4)is for?

-Glenn

Post by /dev/null
-Chris
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

[Ryan Sommers]

Post by /dev/null
Hello any & all,
O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when FreeBSDers
see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be able
to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is the
premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the

If you want to pursue this project, more power to you! Personally, I
always liked the non graphics/colors boot process. It's especially nice
when you are running headless servers and monitor the boot process and
console messages via serial links.

Something you should take a look at though is the KGI for BSD projects.

http://wiki.daemon.li/moin.cgi/KGI

[/dev/null]

Post by Ryan Sommers

Post by /dev/null
Hello any & all,
O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when FreeBSDers
see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be able
to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is the
premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the

If you want to pursue this project, more power to you! Personally, I
always liked the non graphics/colors boot process. It's especially nice
when you are running headless servers and monitor the boot process and
console messages via serial links.

With 30+ servers, I do alot of that as well. But it has always bothered
me for some reason that Linux has always had their flashy boot screens.
While FBSD has not. It was sort of like Linux thumbing it's nose at me.
So, I felt like I'd like to start contributing to FBSD and this seemed
like an easy place to start. Later, something more advanced (and useful).

Thanks for the link! It should prove very useful.

Best wishes,
Chris

Post by Ryan Sommers
Something you should take a look at though is the KGI for BSD projects.
http://wiki.daemon.li/moin.cgi/KGI
--
Ryan Sommers
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Mike Jakubik]

Post by /dev/null
With 30+ servers, I do alot of that as well. But it has always bothered
me for some reason that Linux has always had their flashy boot screens.
While FBSD has not. It was sort of like Linux thumbing it's nose at me.
So, I felt like I'd like to start contributing to FBSD and this seemed
like an easy place to start. Later, something more advanced (and useful).
Thanks for the link! It should prove very useful.

Personally, i prefer the current fbsd boot process over the linux flashy
ones. Its useless bloat, that wont impress any serious audience. But if
thats what you want, you can always use splash.

[Ryan Sommers]

Post by Mike Jakubik

Post by /dev/null
Thanks for the link! It should prove very useful.

Personally, i prefer the current fbsd boot process over the linux flashy
ones. Its useless bloat, that wont impress any serious audience. But if
thats what you want, you can always use splash.

Those are my sentiments exactly. I viewed it as fluff. It's like having 5
cup holders in a 2 seat car that can't go over 50mph, downhill. Anytime
I've seen the colorful graphics Linux boot it makes me scoff. To me it
just looks like developers time that could have been better spent
elsewhere. But, it's their time they can spend it how they want. I'd
rather them add frivilous features to an open source package than charge
outrageous prices for them.

However, I DO think FreeBSD needs some more fluff in certain areas. While
I don't want to see FreeBSD turn into a desktop OS that grandma can use, I
do think the desktop market is a large niche for Open Source operating
systems that need a little fluff and eye candy to turn heads. It's when
those heads turn that corporate dollars flow toward the real development.
Which, no matter what you say, without money open source developers would
be living in boxes, someone has to pay the bill sometime.

[Michael Nottebrock]

Post by Mike Jakubik

Post by /dev/null
With 30+ servers, I do alot of that as well. But it has always bothered
me for some reason that Linux has always had their flashy boot screens.
While FBSD has not. It was sort of like Linux thumbing it's nose at me.
So, I felt like I'd like to start contributing to FBSD and this seemed
like an easy place to start. Later, something more advanced (and useful).
Thanks for the link! It should prove very useful.

Personally, i prefer the current fbsd boot process over the linux flashy
ones. Its useless bloat, that wont impress any serious audience.

The flashy linux boot splashs and related stuff are just byproducts of some
very good, pretty versatile and, in the case of embedded appliances often
mission-critical framebuffer support.

[Stephen McKay]

Post by /dev/null
With 30+ servers, I do alot of that as well. But it has always bothered
me for some reason that Linux has always had their flashy boot screens.
While FBSD has not. It was sort of like Linux thumbing its nose at me.
So, I felt like I'd like to start contributing to FBSD and this seemed
like an easy place to start. Later, something more advanced (and useful).

Personally, I prefer the current fbsd boot process over the linux flashy
ones. It's useless bloat, that won't impress any serious audience.

Put me in the flashiness hating camp also. I especially dislike the
Linux 60Hz super-eye-destroying graphical boot, which I have to go to the
trouble of defeating as it is the default.

I hope you enjoy coding your new feature, but I also hope it will be easy
to permanently disable as graphical booting is a step backwards in my view.

Stephen.

[/dev/null]

Post by Stephen McKay

Post by /dev/null
With 30+ servers, I do alot of that as well. But it has always bothered
me for some reason that Linux has always had their flashy boot screens.
While FBSD has not. It was sort of like Linux thumbing its nose at me.
So, I felt like I'd like to start contributing to FBSD and this seemed
like an easy place to start. Later, something more advanced (and useful).

Personally, I prefer the current fbsd boot process over the linux flashy
ones. It's useless bloat, that won't impress any serious audience.

Put me in the flashiness hating camp also. I especially dislike the
Linux 60Hz super-eye-destroying graphical boot, which I have to go to the
trouble of defeating as it is the default.
I hope you enjoy coding your new feature, but I also hope it will be easy
to permanently disable as graphical booting is a step backwards in my view.

Hey, this is an RFC and this is what it's all about. Appreciate your
comment(s).

-Chris

Post by Stephen McKay
Stephen.
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Michael Nottebrock]

Post by Stephen McKay
Put me in the flashiness hating camp also. I especially dislike the
Linux 60Hz super-eye-destroying graphical boot, which I have to go to the
trouble of defeating as it is the default.

With CRTs on the retreat though, less and less people care about refresh
rates ... you'll probably join that camp at some point as well. :-)

[Ryan Sommers]

Post by Michael Nottebrock
With CRTs on the retreat though, less and less people care about refresh
rates ... you'll probably join that camp at some point as well. :-)

I wouldn't count them out just yet! I still have a 7 year old 19" Sony
Trinitron that is kicking butt, despite the fact that it has about 10
battle scars from rolling around in a truck bed (don't ask). I haven't
switched it with an LCD just because it still has better clarity and color
quality than any LCD I've seen.

[/dev/null]

Post by Ryan Sommers

Post by Michael Nottebrock
With CRTs on the retreat though, less and less people care about refresh
rates ... you'll probably join that camp at some point as well. :-)

I wouldn't count them out just yet! I still have a 7 year old 19" Sony
Trinitron that is kicking butt, despite the fact that it has about 10
battle scars from rolling around in a truck bed (don't ask). I haven't
switched it with an LCD just because it still has better clarity and color
quality than any LCD I've seen.

Yes! I couldn't agree more. I've been *enjoying* a 20" NEC Multisync XL
(is trinitron too) that inspite of being a 60Hz fixed freq. is *still*
clearer and provides more brilliant color than any LCD I've seen.

-Chris

Post by Ryan Sommers
--
Ryan Sommers
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Joe Kelsey]

Post by /dev/null

Post by Ryan Sommers

Post by Michael Nottebrock
With CRTs on the retreat though, less and less people care about refresh
rates ... you'll probably join that camp at some point as well. :-)

I wouldn't count them out just yet! I still have a 7 year old 19" Sony
Trinitron that is kicking butt, despite the fact that it has about 10
battle scars from rolling around in a truck bed (don't ask). I haven't
switched it with an LCD just because it still has better clarity and color
quality than any LCD I've seen.

Yes! I couldn't agree more. I've been *enjoying* a 20" NEC Multisync XL
(is trinitron too) that inspite of being a 60Hz fixed freq. is *still*
clearer and provides more brilliant color than any LCD I've seen.

The only reason you *think* your CRT looks better than the LCD is due to
the misaligned LCD's on display at most stores.

In order to really appreciate the clarity and sharpness of an LCD you
must either plug it into a DVI interface, in which case no alignment is
necessary, or spend a significant amount of time adjusting it to work
correctly on an analog interface.

Since most stores do not bother to hook up DVI interfaces, you must
spend a significant amount of time adjusting each monitor to make sure
that it matches the analog signal exactly with the dots on the screen.
If the signal does not match the dots, you get an ugly, blurry image.

You must also make sure that your screen resolution matches the LCD
resolution *exactly*. Do not ever run an 1280x1024 LCD at 1024x768 or
even at 800x600. You will hate the results.

Recently, a friend and I went to the Seattle Frye's and spent almost 2
hours in front of the row of 19" LCD monitors very carefully going
through each one's setup menu and finding the hidden control which
adjusted the analog signal with the monitor dots. None of them called
the signal the same thing (not even two different Viewsonic monitors!),
but they all had a signal which essentially worked to align the input
signal with the dot mask of the monitor. Once we got them all aligned,
it was very tough to tell the difference between the monitors. We ended
up buying the ViewSonic V910 fir $400. As soon as I got it home and
plugged into my Matrox MGA 550 (which has two interfaces, one analog and
one digital) it worked instantly with no adjustment other than the
brightness (backlight intensity).

If you buy a LCD, please make sure you have a card with digital I/O. I
recommend that you stay as far away as possible from anything recent as
none of those idiotic NVIDIA cards do anything reasonable. Buy an old
Matrox, at least a MGA 400 with the dual monitor plugs on it.

/Joe

[David G. Lawrence]

Post by Joe Kelsey

Post by /dev/null

Post by Ryan Sommers
I wouldn't count them out just yet! I still have a 7 year old 19" Sony
Trinitron that is kicking butt, despite the fact that it has about 10
battle scars from rolling around in a truck bed (don't ask). I haven't
switched it with an LCD just because it still has better clarity and color
quality than any LCD I've seen.

Yes! I couldn't agree more. I've been *enjoying* a 20" NEC Multisync XL
(is trinitron too) that inspite of being a 60Hz fixed freq. is *still*
clearer and provides more brilliant color than any LCD I've seen.

The only reason you *think* your CRT looks better than the LCD is due to
the misaligned LCD's on display at most stores.

Actually, while it is true that most LCD panels are not adjusted
correctly, there are technology deficiencies in LCD as well. For one
thing, LCD has comparatively poor black level due to backlight leakage.
Also, while it is true that LCDs should always be connected using DVI
at the native resolution to avoid scaling and analog signal artifacts,
it is not true that this will make the color perfect. In addition to
the CIE colorspace (i.e. the color spectrum of the red, green, and blue
primaries) needing to be correct, the color of white/gray is also
critical. Most LCD panels don't have the necessary controls to adjust
this properly - they usually only have an adjustment for RGB gain, but
lack RGB offset and gamma controls. On the other hand, most CRTs also
lack user accessible controls for these settings.
Personally, I haven't owned a CRT for nearly a decade. For computer
use, nothing beats the sharpness of a DVI-connected LCD. For television,
DLP projection is a better choice for black level and color accuracy.
But what does any of this have to do with FreeBSD? :-)

-DG

David G. Lawrence
President
Download Technologies, Inc. - http://www.downloadtech.com - [phone]
TeraSolutions, Inc. - http://www.terasolutions.com - [phone]
The FreeBSD Project - http://www.freebsd.org
Pave the road of life with opportunities.

[Stephen McKay]

Post by Ryan Sommers

Post by Michael Nottebrock
With CRTs on the retreat though, less and less people care about refresh
rates ... you'll probably join that camp at some point as well. :-)

I wouldn't count them out just yet! I still have a 7 year old 19" Sony
Trinitron that is kicking butt, despite the fact that it has about 10
battle scars from rolling around in a truck bed (don't ask). I haven't
switched it with an LCD just because it still has better clarity and color
quality than any LCD I've seen.

Indeed! I haven't found an LCD I can stand to look at. I expect the screen
to look the same from any angle, and no LCD does that yet. And the colour
reproduction. Yuck! Let's not even talk about stuck pixels...

Ahem. So, if anyone is fiddling with graphical boots, please bear in mind
that VESA refresh rates of at least 75Hz (preferably 85Hz to 100Hz) are
still necessary.

Stephen.

PS My personal guess is that LCDs will be "good enough" in about 5 years.
Let's see if I'm still a CRT curmudgeon in 2010, picking through landfill
looking for working CRTs. :-)

[/dev/null]

Post by Michael Nottebrock

Post by Stephen McKay
Put me in the flashiness hating camp also. I especially dislike the
Linux 60Hz super-eye-destroying graphical boot, which I have to go to the
trouble of defeating as it is the default.

With CRTs on the retreat though, less and less people care about refresh
rates ... you'll probably join that camp at some point as well. :-)

WOOT!

sorry Stephen, this one really caught me by suprise and i found myself
on the floor with tears of laughter.

Seriously Stephen, this is an RFC and your comment as important
as all of the comments recieved. Regardless.

BTW - I've been running 30+ servers thru a kvm to an NEC Multisync XL
for about 5 years now? A little investigation into this model
may be of interest to you.

-Chris

Post by Michael Nottebrock
--
(/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve | http://www.freebsd.org
\u/ | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko]

Post by Michael Nottebrock

Post by Stephen McKay
Put me in the flashiness hating camp also. I especially dislike the
Linux 60Hz super-eye-destroying graphical boot, which I have to go to the
trouble of defeating as it is the default.

With CRTs on the retreat though, less and less people care about refresh
rates ... you'll probably join that camp at some point as well. :-)

Well, Knoppix's default resolution manages to blink on my laptop's
LCD...

Go figure.

[Scott Long]

Post by /dev/null
Hello any & all,
O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when FreeBSDers
see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be able
to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is the
premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the
(a fixed width font required to view the layout correctly)
--------------------------------------------------------
| some |
| sort |
| of |
| graphic goes in this area |
|--------------------------------------------------------
| boot |
| |
| messages |
| |
| seen |
| |
| here |
| bla... |
| bla... |
| bla... |
---------------------------------------------------------
-Chris

Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
raster-based console? Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
consider.

Scott

[Mike Edenfield]

Post by Scott Long
Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
raster-based console? Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
consider.

One possible alternative to an all-out graphics display would be a
'prettified' text console. I'm thinking of what Gentoo and older RedHat
systems did (haven't used RH in years, dunno if this still applies)
where about 80% of the system log messages are hidden behind a simple
task list:

Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]

etc. With, of course, the obligatory cyan, magenta, and bright green
colors. While partly eye candy, I find it much easier to deal with than
the free-form scrolling you currently get on FreeBSD. There's
definitely a different boot-message requirement between a headless
server, headed (?) server, novice user desktop, advanced user desktop,
etc. Currently FreeBSD only gives you three options: Static Graphic,
Verbose Messages, or *REALLY* Verbose Messages.

My only concern is that the console output, if I have any clue what I'm
talking about, are not centralized anywhere that could be easily
modified based on a setting. Is this correct?

--Mike

[Matthew D. Fuller]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 03:03:06PM -0400 I heard the voice of

Post by Mike Edenfield
One possible alternative to an all-out graphics display would be a
'prettified' text console. I'm thinking of what Gentoo and older RedHat
systems did (haven't used RH in years, dunno if this still applies)
where about 80% of the system log messages are hidden behind a simple
Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]

This is something I've always found somewhat ironic, actually. I'm
not really sure overall whether I like it or not, but it IS very
structured and consistent. The irony is that I find the Linux kernel
bootup messages to be an insane mishmash that I can never sort
ANYTHING out of, relative to FreeBSD's very neat and structured kernel
probes. So maybe an OS is only allowed to be neat in one of the two
8-}

[Michael Nottebrock]

Post by Matthew D. Fuller
On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 03:03:06PM -0400 I heard the voice of

Post by Mike Edenfield
One possible alternative to an all-out graphics display would be a
'prettified' text console. I'm thinking of what Gentoo and older RedHat
systems did (haven't used RH in years, dunno if this still applies)
where about 80% of the system log messages are hidden behind a simple
Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]

This is something I've always found somewhat ironic, actually. I'm
not really sure overall whether I like it or not, but it IS very
structured and consistent.

Yes, it consistently hides (or worse, discards) useful information - be it
status messages, errors or otherwise. Most distros don't bother about the
possible return codes of each service in detail either, so every condition
that could occur is reduced to [ok] or [failed]. Even the NT eventlog isn't
that dumb.

[Alexander Leidinger]

Post by Matthew D. Fuller

Post by Mike Edenfield
Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]

This is something I've always found somewhat ironic, actually. I'm
not really sure overall whether I like it or not, but it IS very
structured and consistent. The irony is that I find the Linux kernel
bootup messages to be an insane mishmash that I can never sort
ANYTHING out of, relative to FreeBSD's very neat and structured kernel
probes. So maybe an OS is only allowed to be neat in one of the two
8-}

I think restructuring our userland boot message would be a good start. I'm
not talking about the above proposal, even if I think it's nice (but a
little bit too terse for me), I'm talking about rethinking the actual (since
the new rc system) clutter.

The 4.x startup looks structured (it could be improved to be more eye
friendly, but the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder), while the 5+ one
is neither fish nor meat. It's a mixture of the 4.x one with the "Starting
xyz" messages from the new system. Since we don't try to keep the new system
diff friendly with the NetBSD source anymore, I think we could change it to
fit our needs.

Bye,
Alexander.

[/dev/null]

Post by Alexander Leidinger

Post by Matthew D. Fuller

Post by Mike Edenfield
Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]

This is something I've always found somewhat ironic, actually. I'm
not really sure overall whether I like it or not, but it IS very
structured and consistent. The irony is that I find the Linux kernel
bootup messages to be an insane mishmash that I can never sort
ANYTHING out of, relative to FreeBSD's very neat and structured kernel
probes. So maybe an OS is only allowed to be neat in one of the two
8-}

I think restructuring our userland boot message would be a good start. I'm
not talking about the above proposal, even if I think it's nice (but a
little bit too terse for me), I'm talking about rethinking the actual (since
the new rc system) clutter.
The 4.x startup looks structured (it could be improved to be more eye
friendly, but the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder), while the 5+ one
is neither fish nor meat. It's a mixture of the 4.x one with the "Starting
xyz" messages from the new system. Since we don't try to keep the new system
diff friendly with the NetBSD source anymore, I think we could change it to
fit our needs.

Maybe this would be a better place for me to start
(assuming no objection(s)). I mean, it may turn out
the large majority of opinion is: boot-banner SUX! So
in either case; making what already exists more desirable/
funcional; seems the best place to start something. As
opposed to adding to something that might me better polished
up. What's more, I was thinking; what if the current settings
( verbose/ terse ) were expanded and prettified(stylized).
Example: 3 settings;

1) no output: black, or blank screen until the prompt/ login.

2) terse:
a) only dumps warnings
b) dumps item at succesful load, or else failure message as returned by
failed object.

3) verbose:
a) raw (pretty much the way it is now but unify/ sanitize the messages
returned - (4.x ify?))
b) prettified
(example(s):

mysql <loaded>

or

mysql <message returned upon load/ or load failure>)

both <loaded> or <message> *could* be colorized.

Anyway, it seems like this would be an opprotunity to unify/ bring
the current proccess up to date _and_ provide for a manner of display
that has something for everybody. Am I crazy? Probably, but that's
not the real question here. ;)

-Chris

Post by Alexander Leidinger
Bye,
Alexander.
--
Big book, big bore.
-- Callimachus
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Alexander Leidinger]

Post by /dev/null

Post by Alexander Leidinger
I think restructuring our userland boot message would be a good start. I'm
not talking about the above proposal, even if I think it's nice (but a
little bit too terse for me), I'm talking about rethinking the actual (since
the new rc system) clutter.
The 4.x startup looks structured (it could be improved to be more eye
friendly, but the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder), while the 5+ one
is neither fish nor meat. It's a mixture of the 4.x one with the "Starting
xyz" messages from the new system. Since we don't try to keep the new system
diff friendly with the NetBSD source anymore, I think we could change it to
fit our needs.

Maybe this would be a better place for me to start
(assuming no objection(s)). I mean, it may turn out
the large majority of opinion is: boot-banner SUX! So

If root is able to switch the boot-banner on/off, and as long as headless and
serial-console enabled systems behave as usual, nothing should stop you from
doing this project.

Post by /dev/null
in either case; making what already exists more desirable/
funcional; seems the best place to start something. As
opposed to adding to something that might me better polished
up. What's more, I was thinking; what if the current settings
( verbose/ terse ) were expanded and prettified(stylized).
Example: 3 settings;
1) no output: black, or blank screen until the prompt/ login.

That's not a good option (from an usability point of view). You need at least
some progress indicator, else an user will ask if the system freezed or not.

Post by /dev/null
a) only dumps warnings
b) dumps item at succesful load, or else failure message as returned by
failed object.
a) raw (pretty much the way it is now but unify/ sanitize the messages
returned - (4.x ify?))
b) prettified
mysql <loaded>
or
mysql <message returned upon load/ or load failure>)
both <loaded> or <message> *could* be colorized.

That's too much options IMHO ("less" is "more", you know? ;-) ). You need a
progress indicator in 2), and you need the possibility to report errors in
1), so I think you can reduce it to
a) progress indicator + error output
b) raw (as is, or polished up)
c) nice

But since we don't have an option to shut up the kernel messages on boot, I
think we don't need a).

If you want to proceeed with this, you should move over to the freebsd rc
mailinglist.

Bye,
Alexander.

[/dev/null]

Post by Alexander Leidinger

Post by /dev/null

Post by Alexander Leidinger
I think restructuring our userland boot message would be a good start. I'm
not talking about the above proposal, even if I think it's nice (but a
little bit too terse for me), I'm talking about rethinking the actual (since
the new rc system) clutter.
The 4.x startup looks structured (it could be improved to be more eye
friendly, but the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder), while the 5+ one
is neither fish nor meat. It's a mixture of the 4.x one with the "Starting
xyz" messages from the new system. Since we don't try to keep the new system
diff friendly with the NetBSD source anymore, I think we could change
it
to
fit our needs.

Maybe this would be a better place for me to start
(assuming no objection(s)). I mean, it may turn out
the large majority of opinion is: boot-banner SUX! So

If root is able to switch the boot-banner on/off, and as long as headless and
serial-console enabled systems behave as usual, nothing should stop you from
doing this project.

Post by /dev/null
in either case; making what already exists more desirable/
funcional; seems the best place to start something. As
opposed to adding to something that might me better polished
up. What's more, I was thinking; what if the current settings
( verbose/ terse ) were expanded and prettified(stylized).
Example: 3 settings;
1) no output: black, or blank screen until the prompt/ login.

That's not a good option (from an usability point of view). You need at least
some progress indicator, else an user will ask if the system freezed or not.

Post by /dev/null
a) only dumps warnings
b) dumps item at succesful load, or else failure message as returned by
failed object.
a) raw (pretty much the way it is now but unify/ sanitize the messages
returned - (4.x ify?))
b) prettified
mysql <loaded>
or
mysql <message returned upon load/ or load failure>)
both <loaded> or <message> *could* be colorized.

That's too much options IMHO ("less" is "more", you know? ;-) ). You need a
progress indicator in 2), and you need the possibility to report errors in
1), so I think you can reduce it to
a) progress indicator + error output
b) raw (as is, or polished up)
c) nice
But since we don't have an option to shut up the kernel messages on boot, I
think we don't need a).

I can see all your points. I'm just forming these concepts. So it's great
to hear others perspectives on this. It's easy to overlook details
sometimes.

Post by Alexander Leidinger
If you want to proceeed with this,
you should move over to the freebsd rc mailinglist.

Could you expand on this? I don't know sbout that list.
Or you just attempting to get rid of me?

Post by Alexander Leidinger
Bye,
Alexander.
--
If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many
books on how to?
-- Bette Midler
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

-Chris H.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Stephen McKay]

Post by Mike Edenfield
One possible alternative to an all-out graphics display would be a
'prettified' text console. I'm thinking of what Gentoo and older RedHat
systems did (haven't used RH in years, dunno if this still applies)
where about 80% of the system log messages are hidden behind a simple
Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]
etc. With, of course, the obligatory cyan, magenta, and bright green
colors.

Interesting. I always found this aspect of Linux very annoying and
certainly no advance over what FreeBSD provides already. Linux puts out
at least as much verbiage as FreeBSD but in a less readable form.

Post by Mike Edenfield
There's definitely a different boot-message requirement between a headless
server, headed (?) server, novice user desktop, advanced user desktop,
etc.

Definitely? I don't see the distinction you draw between these categories.
At the very most, for a casual user you could cover up the booting phase
with a picture of Beastie. The rest is fine.

Stephen.

[Toxa]

Post by Mike Edenfield

Post by Scott Long
Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
raster-based console? Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
consider.

One possible alternative to an all-out graphics display would be a
'prettified' text console. I'm thinking of what Gentoo and older RedHat
systems did (haven't used RH in years, dunno if this still applies)
where about 80% of the system log messages are hidden behind a simple
Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]
etc. With, of course, the obligatory cyan, magenta, and bright green
colors. While partly eye candy, I find it much easier to deal with than

This is the most stupid idea I've ever head. Please, PLEASE, don't waste
your time turning FreeBSD into pink lolypop. Is it already
super-perfect-mega-stable-with-all-desired-features-implemeted? IMHO if
somebody wants to spare his time and skills working on freebsd, he should choose
more useful direction for his mights and power. For example, take a look
at all these PRs...

[Eric Anderson]

Post by Toxa

Post by Mike Edenfield

Post by Scott Long
Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
raster-based console? Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
consider.

One possible alternative to an all-out graphics display would be a
'prettified' text console. I'm thinking of what Gentoo and older RedHat
systems did (haven't used RH in years, dunno if this still applies)
where about 80% of the system log messages are hidden behind a simple
Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]
etc. With, of course, the obligatory cyan, magenta, and bright green
colors. While partly eye candy, I find it much easier to deal with than

This is the most stupid idea I've ever head. Please, PLEASE, don't waste
your time turning FreeBSD into pink lolypop. Is it already
super-perfect-mega-stable-with-all-desired-features-implemeted? IMHO if
somebody wants to spare his time and skills working on freebsd, he should choose
more useful direction for his mights and power. For example, take a look
at all these PRs...

Stop and think that maybe some people can help in the areas that aren't
C coding, or kernel debugging. We still need ideas like this (even if
we choose not to use them), and calling them stupid I think isn't very
constructive for anyone. Ok, so you don't like the idea, we got it.

On the PRs - there are tons of PRs with patches, waiting to be
committed. All it takes is for a committer to grab it, compile, test,
and commit, but regular old FreeBSD supporters like myself can't commit
the code, so what would you like us to do? (That's a rhetorical
question, I don't need an answer).

I, myself, am used to the FreeBSD blast-a-bunch-of-text-at-me bootup
message, and I don't mind it. However, that doesn't mean it couldn't
use some cleaning up. It would be nice if it was a *little* more
organized so you could easily glance at the screen and see whats
happening. The little [OK] messages have been around for quite some
time, and I don't think Redhat invented them - I've seen them on older
HP-UX boxes too, and I have to say, it's a lot easier to tell what is
going on than our current ascii-spray we have now. I've even had
people ask if my machine just crashed when they see it boot.

This could easily be an rc.conf option I'm sure..

Eric

[Scott Long]

Post by Eric Anderson
HP-UX boxes too, and I have to say, it's a lot easier to tell what is
going on than our current ascii-spray we have now. I've even had
people ask if my machine just crashed when they see it boot.
This could easily be an rc.conf option I'm sure..
Eric

As I've told before, I personally strictly dislike idea to add something
till then it's really necessary and desirable. In my humble opinion,
polishing representaton of a boot process is generally bad idea. It
brings nothing useful into boot process, adds more code into system (We
all don't want freebsd to be bloated, do we?), and don't makes such users as
you described above more clever.

Are you the gatekeeper for the 'necessary and desirable' standard? I'd
prefer to keep the debate technical and see what can be produced rather
than inject personal opinion as if it represents everyone.

Scott

[Toxa]

Post by Scott Long
Are you the gatekeeper for the 'necessary and desirable' standard? I'd
prefer to keep the debate technical and see what can be produced rather
than inject personal opinion as if it represents everyone.
Scott

No. That's why I've told my opinion: boot banner is not the feature
everyone want to see in FreeBSD right now, am I right? Just dont' think
about it as a "good thing which may brings more eye-candy look". I
prefer to sit down and estimate all pros and contras of this feature.
That's all.

[Toxa]

Post by Eric Anderson
HP-UX boxes too, and I have to say, it's a lot easier to tell what is
going on than our current ascii-spray we have now. I've even had
people ask if my machine just crashed when they see it boot.
This could easily be an rc.conf option I'm sure..
Eric

As I've told before, I personally strictly dislike idea to add something
till then it's really necessary and desirable. In my humble opinion,
polishing representaton of a boot process is generally bad idea. It
brings nothing useful into boot process, adds more code into system (We
all don't want freebsd to be bloated, do we?), and don't makes such users as
you described above more clever.

[R. Tyler Ballance]

As I've told before, I personally strictly dislike idea to add
something
till then it's really necessary and desirable. In my humble opinion,
polishing representaton of a boot process is generally bad idea. It
brings nothing useful into boot process, adds more code into system (We
all don't want freebsd to be bloated, do we?), and don't makes such users as
you described above more clever.

I think you're mistaking convenience for bloat...someone mentioned
the old redhat boot process earlier, and I can agree with them, that
that was, convenient, easy to read, and in no way seemed to add any
bloat to the ASCII output.

Now, a pretty image, a la FreeSBIE, _is_ bloat, but I don't think
that's what is being mentioned or suggested here.

Toxa, you make Window Managers, and a lot of GUI apps that make
things like, using MacOS X sound terribly bloated, don't discount
aesthetics right off the bat, they're not always "evil bloat"

-R. Tyler Ballance

[Toxa]

Post by R. Tyler Ballance
I think you're mistaking convenience for bloat...someone mentioned
the old redhat boot process earlier, and I can agree with them, that
that was, convenient, easy to read, and in no way seemed to add any
bloat to the ASCII output.
Now, a pretty image, a la FreeSBIE, _is_ bloat, but I don't think
that's what is being mentioned or suggested here.
Toxa, you make Window Managers, and a lot of GUI apps that make
things like, using MacOS X sound terribly bloated, don't discount
aesthetics right off the bat, they're not always "evil bloat"

I'm afraid of tendency. A little this, a little that, and at the end
of it we'll get pretty nifty OS full of "cool but really unnecessary" features :-)

[Mike Edenfield]

Post by Toxa

Post by Mike Edenfield
One possible alternative to an all-out graphics display would be a
'prettified' text console. I'm thinking of what Gentoo and older RedHat
systems did (haven't used RH in years, dunno if this still applies)
where about 80% of the system log messages are hidden behind a simple
Mounting File Systems ... [ok]
Starting xl0 ... [ok]
etc. With, of course, the obligatory cyan, magenta, and bright green
colors. While partly eye candy, I find it much easier to deal with than

This is the most stupid idea I've ever head. Please, PLEASE, don't waste
your time turning FreeBSD into pink lolypop. Is it already
super-perfect-mega-stable-with-all-desired-features-implemeted? IMHO if
somebody wants to spare his time and skills working on freebsd, he should choose
more useful direction for his mights and power. For example, take a look
at all these PRs...

1) It is far from a stupid idea if even one person honestly feels it
would be a benefit. No need to be abusive about it.

2) If I were to choose to work on FreeBSD, I would be free to work on
whatever I felt was lacking. That's how it works. Especially given
that I have nowhere near enough skill in C to work on more complex
system-level issues.

3) I was merely making suggestions as to what alternatives were
available. Since almost every Linux distro does something similar to
this proposal, there is obviously SOME merit to it; the benefit may be
miniscule, or irrelevant to many people, but it still exists.

--Mike

[Toxa]

Post by Mike Edenfield
1) It is far from a stupid idea if even one person honestly feels it
would be a benefit. No need to be abusive about it.

Yes, I have to mention this was only my humble opinion.

Post by Mike Edenfield
2) If I were to choose to work on FreeBSD, I would be free to work on
whatever I felt was lacking. That's how it works. Especially given
that I have nowhere near enough skill in C to work on more complex
system-level issues.

Yes, you can do whatewer you want. But what about the result? I think
several hundreds lines of lolypop-boot-related code will definitively
NOT bring FreeBSD more cleaness and design simpleness. And that's everyone likes in
BSDs!

Post by Mike Edenfield
3) I was merely making suggestions as to what alternatives were
available. Since almost every Linux distro does something similar to
this proposal, there is obviously SOME merit to it; the benefit may be
miniscule, or irrelevant to many people, but it still exists.

See my opinion above. It's a bad, BAD style, to add features till
then they're really necessary and desirable. IMHO.

[/dev/null]

Post by Toxa

Post by Mike Edenfield
1) It is far from a stupid idea if even one person honestly feels it
would be a benefit. No need to be abusive about it.

Yes, I have to mention this was only my humble opinion.

Post by Mike Edenfield
2) If I were to choose to work on FreeBSD, I would be free to work on
whatever I felt was lacking. That's how it works. Especially given
that I have nowhere near enough skill in C to work on more complex
system-level issues.

Yes, you can do whatewer you want. But what about the result? I think
several hundreds lines of lolypop-boot-related code will definitively
NOT bring FreeBSD more cleaness and design simpleness. And that's everyone likes in
BSDs!

"And that's everyone likes in BSD's"
WOW! Were you elected Official Spokesperson for everyone? ;)

Post by Toxa

Post by Mike Edenfield
3) I was merely making suggestions as to what alternatives were
available. Since almost every Linux distro does something similar to
this proposal, there is obviously SOME merit to it; the benefit may be
miniscule, or irrelevant to many people, but it still exists.

See my opinion above. It's a bad, BAD style, to add features till
then they're really necessary and desirable. IMHO.

See my opinion of your deciding to decide my opinion above. ;)
I might also add that if it is *your* opinion that it should not be
added. Then I would suggest to you that you simply *not* add it to
your own installation. In short; an addon is simply that - an addon.
You don't like it? don't add it. :)

No "sour grapes" here. Just felt the need to chime in.

-Chris

Post by Toxa
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Toxa]

Post by /dev/null
"And that's everyone likes in BSD's"
WOW! Were you elected Official Spokesperson for everyone? ;)

What's wrong? Do you dislike BSD for it's simpleness and cleareness and
prefer to walk with mouse through thousands of windows configureing MS
Server 2003? ;-))))
--
Anton A. Karpov

WWW: http://www.toxahost.ru
PGP Key ID: A21386F2
You can finger ***@weirdzone.org for my current status
=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=
Hi! I am a .signature virus!
Copy me into your ~/.signature to help me spread!
=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=

[/dev/null]

Post by Toxa

Post by /dev/null
"And that's everyone likes in BSD's"
WOW! Were you elected Official Spokesperson for everyone? ;)

What's wrong? Do you dislike BSD for it's simpleness and cleareness and
prefer to walk with mouse through thousands of windows configureing MS
Server 2003? ;-))))

Fair enough. Just so you can better appreciate *my* personal preference(s).
I have 30+ servers. All of which originally were running some sort of M$
product. It may interest you to know that only *2* of them have M$ on them
now. Their days are numbered. ;) Now, I do find that "clicking around"
*can* be the most effecient way to accomplish some things. *IF* the path
to the destination is the shortest. Unfortunately for M$ products, the
newer the product, the *longer* the path - getting things done w/ a mouse
in M$ requires taking the scenic route. So, having found that FreeBSD is
by far and away the most *effeciently* functioning OS available. I
naturally chose it for those servers. The fact that I chose it should say
something for character, no? While what I propose for the boot scrn does
potentially add some more bits to ones install image. It is *optional*
meaning it is not a requirement. Remember, alot of FBSD installs are
workstations (a place for computer enthusiasts and the likes) that simply
provide a place to hold their digital toys and eye candy - provide some
sort of visual stimuli. While this is not "my cup of tea" it is to a large
number of ppl.
I realize this was a l o n g reply. But I had hopped that we might have
a better understanding now and not turn this "opinion" into a *huge*
thread. :)

-Chris

P.S. My favorite place is still at the prompt.

Post by Toxa
--
Anton A. Karpov
WWW: http://www.toxahost.ru
PGP Key ID: A21386F2
=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=
Hi! I am a .signature virus!
Copy me into your ~/.signature to help me spread!
=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Peter Jeffery]

----- Original Message -----
From: "/dev/null" <***@dnswatch.com>
To: "Toxa" <***@sendmail.ru>
Cc: <freebsd-***@freebsd.org>
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2005 11:50 PM
Subject: Re: boot banner project

Post by /dev/null
Fair enough. Just so you can better appreciate *my* personal
preference(s).
I have 30+ servers. All of which originally were running some sort of M$
product. It may interest you to know that only *2* of them have M$ on them
now. Their days are numbered. ;) Now, I do find that "clicking around"
*can* be the most effecient way to accomplish some things. *IF* the path
to the destination is the shortest. Unfortunately for M$ products, the
newer the product, the *longer* the path - getting things done w/ a mouse
in M$ requires taking the scenic route. So, having found that FreeBSD is
by far and away the most *effeciently* functioning OS available. I
naturally chose it for those servers. The fact that I chose it should say
something for character, no? While what I propose for the boot scrn does
potentially add some more bits to ones install image. It is *optional*
meaning it is not a requirement. Remember, alot of FBSD installs are
workstations (a place for computer enthusiasts and the likes) that simply
provide a place to hold their digital toys and eye candy - provide some
sort of visual stimuli. While this is not "my cup of tea" it is to a large
number of ppl.
I realize this was a l o n g reply. But I had hopped that we might have
a better understanding now and not turn this "opinion" into a *huge*
thread. :)

If you have a systems room with a good collection of different OS's this
gets me thinking about PR for your OS. Do you not want a way to show off
to people that the servers are running FreeBSD, obviously the console
screen savers do some of this for you, but if somebody sees a server
rebooting and it's just a bunch of text scrolling past until you get to
a login prompt, then you get nothing.

Even just some ASCII art, indicating that it's 'Powered by FreeBSD' gets
you PR for the OS for pretty much nothing. There are a lot of people out
there, that might use FreeBSD, that use Linux, because they haven't even
heard of FreeBSD and I would imagine that a PC that people see booting
into something that is not windows will always be assumed to be Linux
too, unless it is clearly stated somewhere during boot.


Just a mad midnight thought.

Post by /dev/null
-Chris
P.S. My favorite place is still at the prompt.

[/dev/null]

Post by Peter Jeffery
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2005 11:50 PM
Subject: Re: boot banner project

Post by /dev/null
Fair enough. Just so you can better appreciate *my* personal
preference(s).
I have 30+ servers. All of which originally were running some sort of M$
product. It may interest you to know that only *2* of them have M$ on them
now. Their days are numbered. ;) Now, I do find that "clicking around"
*can* be the most effecient way to accomplish some things. *IF* the path
to the destination is the shortest. Unfortunately for M$ products, the
newer the product, the *longer* the path - getting things done w/ a mouse
in M$ requires taking the scenic route. So, having found that FreeBSD is
by far and away the most *effeciently* functioning OS available. I
naturally chose it for those servers. The fact that I chose it should say
something for character, no? While what I propose for the boot scrn does
potentially add some more bits to ones install image. It is *optional*
meaning it is not a requirement. Remember, alot of FBSD installs are
workstations (a place for computer enthusiasts and the likes) that simply
provide a place to hold their digital toys and eye candy - provide some
sort of visual stimuli. While this is not "my cup of tea" it is to a large
number of ppl.
I realize this was a l o n g reply. But I had hopped that we might have
a better understanding now and not turn this "opinion" into a *huge*
thread. :)

If you have a systems room with a good collection of different OS's this
gets me thinking about PR for your OS. Do you not want a way to show off
to people that the servers are running FreeBSD, obviously the console
screen savers do some of this for you, but if somebody sees a server
rebooting and it's just a bunch of text scrolling past until you get to
a login prompt, then you get nothing.
Even just some ASCII art, indicating that it's 'Powered by FreeBSD' gets
you PR for the OS for pretty much nothing. There are a lot of people out
there, that might use FreeBSD, that use Linux, because they haven't even
heard of FreeBSD and I would imagine that a PC that people see booting
into something that is not windows will always be assumed to be Linux
too, unless it is clearly stated somewhere during boot.

Or put perhaps another way - There is *nothing hotter* than a beautiful
empty headed blond. Or, nothing will get someones attention than a
beautiful empty headed blond. Except perhaps a green eyed red head. ;)

Post by Peter Jeffery
Just a mad midnight thought.

Post by /dev/null
-Chris
P.S. My favorite place is still at the prompt.

-Chris H.

P.S. This was not to insinuate FBSD was a useless OS, but rather, that
looks are everything (at first).
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Michael Nottebrock]

Post by /dev/null
"And that's everyone likes in BSD's"
WOW! Were you elected Official Spokesperson for everyone? ;)

Everybody has an expert opinion on painting bikesheds.

[John Sconiers]

Is there a reason why we haven't adopted the bsdinstaller?
(www.bsdinstaller.org)

Post by Michael Nottebrock

Post by /dev/null
"And that's everyone likes in BSD's"
WOW! Were you elected Official Spokesperson for everyone? ;)

Everybody has an expert opinion on painting bikesheds.
--
(/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve | http://www.freebsd.org
\u/ | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org

[Scott Long]

Several reasons. The first is the most important:

No one has stepped forward and 'done it'.

Now, I personally have a lot of reservations about it. I
fundamentally don't like the architecture; their claim of
divorcing the UI from the model isn't really true. What
they've done is create a lowest-common-denominator UI framework
that must be invoked directly from the model. Well, I guess
that 'directly' isn't quite right, since it's redirected through
an RPC mechanism. But anyways, instead of having the UI (and
thus the User) direct the flow and control the model, the model
directs the flow and periodically exchanges input with the user.
In other words, it still has much of the architectural limitations
of sysinstall, but with generic UI elements instead of just
ncurses.

They also haven't shown how to solve the hard problems, mainly
partitioning the disk, working in a multi-boot environment,
divorcing the 'install the bits' phase from the 'configure
the bits' phase, etc. So, it's a nice proof of concept at
this point, and it works well for very simple situations, but
I don't consider it a sysinstall replacement yet. If the
point of having a new installer is to improve the existing
state of the art and attract new users, not having multi-boot
and partitioning is a serious limitation. Every time I
evagelise FreeBSD to someone new, the second question they
ask me is whether they can dual boot with it. It is, however,
good at exactly what it was designed for, mainly taking your
existing FreeBSD installation and morphing it into DFly ;-)

Scott

Post by John Sconiers
Is there a reason why we haven't adopted the bsdinstaller?
(www.bsdinstaller.org)

Post by Michael Nottebrock

Post by /dev/null
"And that's everyone likes in BSD's"
WOW! Were you elected Official Spokesperson for everyone? ;)

Everybody has an expert opinion on painting bikesheds.
--
(/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve | http://www.freebsd.org
\u/ | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org

_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

[Matteo Riondato]

Post by Scott Long
ask me is whether they can dual boot with it. It is, however,
good at exactly what it was designed for, mainly taking your
existing FreeBSD installation and morphing it into DFly ;-)

Or installing FreeSBIE on your hard disk.. =)
Best Regards

[Scott Long]

Post by Matteo Riondato

Post by Scott Long
ask me is whether they can dual boot with it. It is, however,
good at exactly what it was designed for, mainly taking your
existing FreeBSD installation and morphing it into DFly ;-)

Or installing FreeSBIE on your hard disk.. =)
Best Regards

Ah yes, I forgot about FreeSBIE. No offense intended =-)

Scott

[Peter Jeremy]

Post by John Sconiers
Is there a reason why we haven't adopted the bsdinstaller?
(www.bsdinstaller.org)

The most likely reason is that no-one has done the work to either turn
it into a port or integrate it into FreeBSD.

[Chuck Robey]

Post by Peter Jeremy

Post by John Sconiers
Is there a reason why we haven't adopted the bsdinstaller?
(www.bsdinstaller.org)

The most likely reason is that no-one has done the work to either turn
it into a port or integrate it into FreeBSD.

My own take on this, is when I want something, I propose it. If I get a
bunch of suggestions, I respond by going off and coding it, If I get a
bunch of complaints, I let it die. But what most often happens, someone
who is less upset by the political arguing than I am goes off and codes
it, and litens to the flack until it gets accepted. I don't do very
well, listening to flack.

[Sam Lawrance]

Post by Scott Long

Post by /dev/null
Hello any & all,
O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when FreeBSDers
see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be able
to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is the
premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the
(a fixed width font required to view the layout correctly)
--------------------------------------------------------
| some |
| sort |
| of |
| graphic goes in this area |
|--------------------------------------------------------
| boot |
| |
| messages |
| |
| seen |
| |
| here |
| bla... |
| bla... |
| bla... |
---------------------------------------------------------
-Chris

Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
raster-based console? Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
consider.

For a small, non-flashy banner, grab a stack of unused characters and
draw a logo into them. Much like what moused does to give us a nice
pointer-shaped pointer rather than an ugly block.

It'll be 1-bit, but you can pick the foreground and background color in
each block from a selection of the most popular console text colours
ever :)

I think you could allocate the top two rows of text to this and get a
nice effect without losing much. And no raster, either.

[Scott Long]

Post by Sam Lawrance

Post by Scott Long

Post by /dev/null
Hello any & all,
O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when FreeBSDers
see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be able
to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is the
premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the
(a fixed width font required to view the layout correctly)
--------------------------------------------------------
| some |
| sort |
| of |
| graphic goes in this area |
|--------------------------------------------------------
| boot |
| |
| messages |
| |
| seen |
| |
| here |
| bla... |
| bla... |
| bla... |
---------------------------------------------------------
-Chris

Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
raster-based console? Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
consider.

For a small, non-flashy banner, grab a stack of unused characters and
draw a logo into them. Much like what moused does to give us a nice
pointer-shaped pointer rather than an ugly block.
It'll be 1-bit, but you can pick the foreground and background color in
each block from a selection of the most popular console text colours
ever :)
I think you could allocate the top two rows of text to this and get a
nice effect without losing much. And no raster, either.

ARGH! Bad memories of the TI-99/4A! Can we at least move up to
Atari800 video technology?

Scott

[Sam Lawrance]

Post by Scott Long

Post by Sam Lawrance

Post by Scott Long
Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
raster-based console? Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
consider.

For a small, non-flashy banner, grab a stack of unused characters and
draw a logo into them. Much like what moused does to give us a nice
pointer-shaped pointer rather than an ugly block.
It'll be 1-bit, but you can pick the foreground and background color in
each block from a selection of the most popular console text colours
ever :)
I think you could allocate the top two rows of text to this and get a
nice effect without losing much. And no raster, either.

ARGH! Bad memories of the TI-99/4A! Can we at least move up to
Atari800 video technology?

Haha! The TI-99/4A was the first computer I ever got my hands on :D

[/dev/null]

Post by Sam Lawrance

Post by Scott Long

Post by Sam Lawrance

Post by Scott Long
Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
raster-based console? Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
consider.

For a small, non-flashy banner, grab a stack of unused characters and
draw a logo into them. Much like what moused does to give us a nice
pointer-shaped pointer rather than an ugly block.
It'll be 1-bit, but you can pick the foreground and background color

in

Post by Sam Lawrance
each block from a selection of the most popular console text colours
ever :)
I think you could allocate the top two rows of text to this and get a
nice effect without losing much. And no raster, either.

ARGH! Bad memories of the TI-99/4A! Can we at least move up to
Atari800 video technology?

Haha! The TI-99/4A was the first computer I ever got my hands on :D

It was a Timex Sinclair for me. :)

Post by Sam Lawrance
_______________________________________________
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Frank Mayhar]

"Beige. I'll paint the bikeshed beige."

[/dev/null]

Post by Frank Mayhar
"Beige. I'll paint the bikeshed beige."

I'll take that as a vote cast for inverse output.

-Chris

Post by Frank Mayhar
--
Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/
http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/

////////////////////////////////////////////////////
If only Western Electric had found a way to offer
binary licenses for the UNIX system back in 1974,
the UNIX system would be running on all PC's today
rather than DOS/Windows.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[Julian H. Stacey]

Post by Brian Candler

Post by Brian Candler
Now the only essential package to install is a POSIX shell with interactive
command history - i.e. "bash" - and it looks like /bin/sh has now gained
that capability too, although sadly not tab-completion.

tcsh is in the base system and has that capability.

(1) it's not enabled by default (you need "set autolist", which I only
discovered recently)

FreeBSD-5.3 (with csh & tcsh) linked does completion without autolist set.
man csh:
If the autolist shell variable is set, the shell lists the remaining
choices (if any) whenever completion fails:
-
Julian Stacey Net & Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
Mail in Ascii (Html=Spam). Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz.

[Brian Candler]

Post by Julian H. Stacey

Post by Brian Candler

tcsh is in the base system and has that capability.

(1) it's not enabled by default (you need "set autolist", which I only
discovered recently)

FreeBSD-5.3 (with csh & tcsh) linked does completion without autolist set.
If the autolist shell variable is set, the shell lists the remaining

Erm?? As you point out, it says "If the autolist shell variable is set"
^^ ^^^^^^

Post by Julian H. Stacey
set autolist
nm /usr/lib/libt[tab]
nm /usr/lib/libterm

"set autolist" could be made the default in /etc/csh.cshrc if desired.
However, this still doesn't alter the fact that csh is a non-POSIX shell.

A long time ago I came across a very good explanation of why csh is totally
unsuitable for scripting; you can probably find it yourself by googling. But
it seems pointless to have one shell for interactive use and a different and
incompatible one for scripting; and for `pw useradd` to choose /bin/sh when
creating new users, but for root to have /bin/csh! This is just an
inconsistency in FreeBSD.

Why does root have /bin/csh as its shell? I imagine that it's because it has
interactive command editing and history. Now that /bin/sh has that feature,
is there any reason for this inconsistency to remain?

I'm not opposed to csh remaining bundled with the system indefinitely, for
those who want it, and for historical purposes. But I don't see why people
should need to be exposed to it these days. Give them /bin/sh, which now has
basic history and command editing, and if they find limitations in that,
they can always upgrade to "bash" from packages. (Or they can switch to csh,
but then they've made an explicit decision to do so, rather than inflicting
it on everyone)

Regards,

Brian.

[Devon H. O'Dell]

Post by Julian H. Stacey

Post by Brian Candler

Post by Brian Candler
Now the only essential package to install is a POSIX shell with interactive
command history - i.e. "bash" - and it looks like /bin/sh has now gained
that capability too, although sadly not tab-completion.

tcsh is in the base system and has that capability.

(1) it's not enabled by default (you need "set autolist", which I only
discovered recently)

FreeBSD-5.3 (with csh & tcsh) linked does completion without autolist set.
If the autolist shell variable is set, the shell lists the remaining
-
Julian Stacey Net & Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
Mail in Ascii (Html=Spam). Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz.

Also:

prompt# ls /some/path/^D
file1 file2 file3
file34567 file9 file99
prompt# ls /some/path/

prompt# ls /some/path/file3^D
file3 file34567
prompt# ls /some/path/file3

^D is quite useful in tcsh ;)

--Devon

[Julian H. Stacey]

Post by Brian Candler

Post by Julian H. Stacey

Post by Brian Candler

tcsh is in the base system and has that capability.

(1) it's not enabled by default (you need "set autolist", which I only
discovered recently)

FreeBSD-5.3 (with csh & tcsh) linked does completion without autolist set.
If the autolist shell variable is set, the shell lists the remaining

Erm?? As you point out, it says "If the autolist shell variable is set"

Tab completion is on by default: Works without needing to know to set autolist.

Post by Brian Candler
Why does root have /bin/csh as its shell?

Probably because we have BSD inheritance, not AT&T Posix.
Csh vi & ^Z job control were all available around 1980 or so I recall, &
were part of what made people keen on BSD.
Right or wrong, if it changed now, it'd cause suprise to existing users.
Linux is an orphan, & free to switch shells at will. BSD has inheritance.

-
Julian Stacey Net & Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
Mail in Ascii (Html=Spam). Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz.

[Brian Candler]

Post by Julian H. Stacey

Post by Brian Candler

Post by Julian H. Stacey
FreeBSD-5.3 (with csh & tcsh) linked does completion without autolist set.
If the autolist shell variable is set, the shell lists the remaining

Erm?? As you point out, it says "If the autolist shell variable is set"

Tab completion is on by default: Works without needing to know to set autolist.

I'm sorry, I think I understand now. We're talking at cross-purposes.

Tab-completion is "on" in the sense that it works if only a single unique
filename matches. It is "off" in the sense that if more than one filename
matches, nothing happens except a terminal beep.

The behaviour that many people miss from `bash` is that pressing tab in that
circumstance pops up a list of matching filenames to choose from. You can
then type the next character or two and hit tab again. That's what "set
autolist" gives you.

Post by Julian H. Stacey

Post by Brian Candler
Why does root have /bin/csh as its shell?

Probably because we have BSD inheritance, not AT&T Posix.

OK, then why doesn't `pw useradd` create user accounts with csh as their
shell as well, by default? Having two different defaults is just confusing.

Post by Julian H. Stacey
Right or wrong, if it changed now, it'd cause suprise to existing users.

Perhaps a little, but I don't think too much. If an old hack installs
FreeBSD-6 and says "dammit, root has a POSIX shell rather than csh!" they
know enough how to switch it.

It shouldn't affect any scripts, because
(a) nobody in their right mind writes shell scripts in csh
(b) if they did, they should start with #!/bin/csh

Yes, newcomers can switch too. But it's just another hurdle to jump through:
"OK, after installation, you need to remember to run vipw or chsh to change
root's shell to a sensible one. Why is it csh? For historical reasons."

I don't think things necessarily have to stay as they are, just because
that's how they've always been. You're right, csh was an innovation in its
day. Most of its innovations have been picked up elsewhere. I humbly suggest
it's now a legacy.

Regards,

Brian.

[Buki]

On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 06:07:37PM +0100, Brian Candler wrote:
[snip]

Post by Brian Candler
Tab-completion is "on" in the sense that it works if only a single unique
filename matches. It is "off" in the sense that if more than one filename
matches, nothing happens except a terminal beep.
The behaviour that many people miss from `bash` is that pressing tab in that
circumstance pops up a list of matching filenames to choose from. You can
then type the next character or two and hit tab again. That's what "set
autolist" gives you.

what's keeping you from pressing ^D to show the list of available choices?

[snip]

P.S. I think the bikeshed should have small flowers painted all over.

Buki

[Jonathan Weiss]

Post by Brian Candler

Post by Warner Losh

Post by Charles Swiger
Agreed. I consider it a serious misfortune that FreeBSD doesn't use
/bin/sh as root's shell. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fix,
so I haven't spent my time complaining about this. :-)

All BSDs have, since a very long time ago, used /bin/csh as root's
shell.

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/etc/master.passwd?rev=1.47&content-t
ype=text/x-cvsweb-markup

They switches only a month or two ago from csh.

Greets,
jonathan