But,what about the people who want the specifics?Why not add a little
"Press <F6>" or something along those lines if you want to install SPECIFIC
things.One time I ran the installation CD again to install the FreeDOS
shell.Another point,I remember when I burned the installation ISO to my
flash drive,and I booted the installation disk from it.The installer seemed
hardwired to install from a CD/DVD.Why not add USB/Flashdrive support?
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 3:35 PM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr. <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
> > On Sep 10, 2015, at 6:10 PM, Eric Auer <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hi, nitpicking and ideas coming up :-)
> >
> >> This gives the user the ability to partition and format elsewhere.
> >> But, you cannot do an install without the drive C:.
> >
> > Actually a "live CD" mode would be nice. Give the user some menu
> > item to load a large ramdisk and install (with fdpkg / fdnpkg) a
> > bunch of DOS programs to the ramdisk, so the users can directly
> > enjoy a spontaneous DOS session without having to format away the
> > already existing OTHER operating systems on their computer.
>
> That would be great. I remember DOS days with a 20MB hard drive.
> Could do a lot with a couple hundred MB ram disk.
>
> > Note that DOS lacks sufficiently powerful tools to resize other
> > partitions to ADD DOS without destroying other partitions, but
> > modern computers are so powerful that people can easily install
> > DOS to a completely empty VIRTUAL harddisk in a virtual machine
>
> Yep, thats how I’m building and testing the bath based the installer.
> 1 VM with FreeDOS 1.1 that builds a Installer Floppy.
> 1 VM that is empty to test it on.
>
> VM’s are so cheap anymore. :)
>
> >
> > So we already have at least five use cases :-)
> >
> > * install from floppy XCOPY style to pre-386 computers, allowing
> > the user to later add packages in a more manual way via FDPKG
> >
> > * install from CD / DVD / USB to completely empty (virtual) PC,
> > making sure that there really is no danger to damage other OS
> >
> > * install to ramdisk for a live CD session, possibly offering a
> > choice between small and large selections of DOS packages
> >
> > * install to existing formatted FAT C: partition, minimizing any
> > damage to already existing contents of C: - in particular, ask
> > the user whether SYS should overwrite the boot sector or if it
> > should only provide a boot sector FILE that the (expert) user
> > can add to their existing boot manager. Maybe also let users
> > decide if they want autoexec / config to be replaced (with a
> > non-destructive backup!) or if they want to use fdconfig.sys
> > and fdauto to keep FreeDOS and ... DOS / Win config separate.
>
> I don’t see a way to install the KERNEL.SYS without updating the
> boot sector. But, should always at least ask to back stuff up.
>
> > * install in a destructive way by partitioning and formatting if
> > the user REALLY knows that this is the right thing to do... Do
> > not try to decide about those things automatically! Not even
> > Ubuntu (which tries to have installation for dummies) does it.
> > As far as I remember, Ubuntu offers "install to free space" if
> > the user has provided free space (e.g. really empty harddisk,
> > or by shrinking Windows from within Windows manually before),
> > "custom install" (with a nice gparted style partition resizer
> > and editor) and "install instead of whatever was there before,
> > destroying existing data" (but clearly warning about risks).
>
> Nuke and pave option. Might be a good idea. I’ll probably stick it in
> there.
>
> > I am sure I have forgotten many cases and issues, but have a look
> > at the OLD FreeDOS installers to see what and how they did, plus
> > have a look at the old discussions about the topic :-) Our older
> > installers are from the time when Windows (e.g. XP) still could
> > be installed on FAT partitions, so they for example tried to see
> > if you had Windows on your C: drive. If yes, they tried to add
> > FreeDOS to the built-in boot menu of Windows and tried to use a
> > DOS specific set of config files without damaging Windows files.
>
> I think adding stuff to a boot menu for Windows, grub, lilo or whatever
> is way beyond the scope of a batch based installer. At least, without
> creating
> additional utilities. Unless some DOS based tools exist for this already?
> I don’t think that will make it into the installer.
>
> >>>> As mentioned earlier, computers older than 386 cannot normally boot
> >>>> from anything large and portable (CD, DVD, USB stick) so you would
> >>>> only install a basic DOS on them, maybe simply by hand: Take some
> >>>> floppy with pre-installed FreeDOS, FORMAT, XCOPY and SYS, done :-)
> >>>
> >>> Even a lot of 486s can't do El Torito. My 486/133 couldn't.
> >
> > For even more nitpicking, there are some fancy tricks and floppy
> > based boot managers to boot from CD / DVD or USB on 386+ PC and
> > people even managed to connect CD / DVD drives to 8086... But is
> > this worth big special efforts? Probably not: 386 owners can go
> > the "floppy basic install, then use fdnpkg" route :-) They can
> > use fdnpkg and the ZIP packages from any normal "if you could
> > boot from CD drive" install CD, without booting from that CD,
> > after finding & installing ancient CD drivers for their drive.
>
> (Please forgive me if I misquote or misunderstand the following Jim.)
>
> Jim says he wants a super simple, nearly option free installer.
> With basically two choices:
>
> Full install
>
> or
>
> Full install with sources.
>
> This is for support purposes and wants all installs to start off with the
> same set of software. That way it is much easier to troubleshoot problems.
> The user can always install more software after the install is successful
> and the system is working.
>
> There are a couple other reasons. But, I see this one as one of the
> primary issues
>
> (It will also make my life easier while building the installer) ;^)
>
> > Cheers, Eric
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
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