On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:19 PM, David Vasek <va...@fido.cz> wrote: > On Wed, 7 Mar 2012, Donald Allen wrote: > >> "While the FAQ is indeed clear, the installer's simplicity appears >> at that point a little deceptive, in that one (I know I was) is >> tempted to think that such a user-friendly installer would not harm >> one so easily..." >> >> I disagree. I think the installer is fine the way it is and it was not >> the problem here. The problem was the original poster's too-cavalier >> approach to something that is well-known to be dangerous. What >> happened here is somewhat analogous to texting while driving or flying >> an airplane drunk and, when disaster occurs, being upset (assuming >> survival) that the equipment didn't prevent it. > > > Except that the equipment shoudn't direct people to behave in such a > disasterous way. And this the case.
I don't think so. This "equipment" provided documentation that said "Multibooting is having several operating systems on one computer, and some means of selecting which OS is to boot. It is not a trivial task! If you don't understand what you are doing, you may end up deleting large amounts of data from your computer. New OpenBSD users are strongly encouraged to start with a blank hard drive on a dedicated machine, and then practice your desired configuration on a non-production system before attempting a multiboot configuration on a production machine." Then the installer said, at the moment of truth, "Use (W)hole disk or (E)dit the MBR? [whole]". I don't see how you can possibly think the "equipment" encouraged this problem. I had one other thought about this. I've been following the OpenBSD mailing lists for some years now and I don't recall ever seeing another discussion of someone else making a hole in their foot at this point in an install. It's possible that I'm wrong (and I don't care to take the time to search the mail archives), but if I'm not, then this situation is an outlier. But on the other hand, I see frequent comments about how quick and easy it is to install OpenBSD. I think part of the reason for that is that the installation process has been carefully streamlined, including using well-chosen (high probability) defaults. Changing that to address a very improbable scenario might well amount to penalizing many to benefit a very few. /Don > > Regards, > David
