# Old installer bug still present



## donallen (Apr 15, 2016)

I have 10.3 installed on two desktop systems on my wired LAN. For the first time since I've tried to use FreeBSD (version 7.something), the system has not presented me with a show-stopping bug, and I am able to take advantage of its virtues (e.g., ZFS is great!). I'm not running back to Arch Linux (now polluted with systemd) for the first time.

I've got a Thinkpad W510 that had Arch installed. I did a full backup and attempted to install 10.3. This machine needs to be on my wireless LAN, WPA2 protected. I use static IP addresses on all my machines, so I can refer to them by name when using ssh, scp, rsync and the like. The name/address mapping is, of course, in /etc/hosts. Simple. But when installing 10.3, I reached the point of configuring the network. I chose the WiFi interface, chose to configure IPV4 with a static address. You get the screen where the address, mask, and default router are collected, but when you hit 'OK', it loops back to asking you which interface to configure! You never get to the screen that collects the search domain and DNS server addresses. You are Charlie on the MTA, stuck in a loop.

I reported this bug almost two years ago by filing a bug report and it has not been fixed. As I noted in a comment I added to the bug report this morning, I am fully aware that I am not paying for this software and that the project has finite resources. I've done a lot of software project management in my long career, so I get it -- you can't work on everything. But I would argue that this is a bug in the first thing people see when encountering FreeBSD -- the installer. It makes a really bad first impression if there are bugs in the installer. Look at the praise the OpenBSD project gets for the little gem of an installer they have. I would also argue that I doubt that this bug is hard to fix, for someone who knows the installer code (the scenario I described above and in my bug report works correctly when configuring an Ethernet interface, so there's an example in the same program of how to do it right).

Two years ago, I had so many problems with the installer I just threw up my hands and went back to Linux. This time, with the success I've had with 10.3 on the desktop machines, I had strong motivation to work around this problem, so I redid the install, configuring the WiFi interface to use DHCP, which the installer handles correctly, with the intent of fixing my /etc/rc.conf after-the-fact, which I did.

If I have time, which is doubtful, I will have a look at the installer code. If I see an obvious fix, I'll submit it. But if not, I really think this ought to be given higher priority than it has been given. Installer bugs this gross really reflect badly on the whole system, which is unfair, but I think that's the way people will react.


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## trev (Apr 16, 2016)

donallen said:


> If I have time, which is doubtful, I will have a look at the installer code. If I see an obvious fix, I'll submit it. But if not, I really think this ought to be given higher priority than it has been given. I



While it would be nice if you submitted the bug with a fix, if you don't have the time, feel free to simply submit the bug. See: https://www.freebsd.org/support/bugreports.html


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## donallen (Apr 16, 2016)

Evidently, you didn't read my post carefully. See the third paragraph.


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## tingo (Apr 16, 2016)

And what was the number of that PR?


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## donallen (Apr 16, 2016)

169199: PR 169199


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## trev (Apr 17, 2016)

donallen said:


> Evidently, you didn't read my post carefully. See the third paragraph.



Oops


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## donallen (Apr 17, 2016)

It happens. It turns out that I misread the date on that original report. I actually filed that report almost four years ago, which adds strength to my point that this problem has existed much too long.


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## tingo (Apr 18, 2016)

The usual way of getting more attention to a PR is to make a post (or a thread, even) to the relevant mailing list. Did you try that?
Due to resource shortage, not all PR's get fixed. And you can't know if anyone else has the same "itch" as you.
(I also use static IP's on my LAN, but I set that up after installation is complete)


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