On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 1:02 AM, Yasha Karant <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I have just (successfully) upgraded my workstation from SL 6x to SL 7x .
> Several observations:
>
> I manually configured both the network and the hard drive resources.  Before
> the actual installation started, there was a warning that I had not set
> either the root password or a user account.  I tried to address these before
> the actual installation started, after choosing the partitions for
> installation of the SL 7 required applications/directories, but the
> installer froze with a request to send an error message to the upstream
> vendor -- and the sending did not work.  Upon rebooting and restarting the
> install, I found that the partitions/disks had been changed, but no packages
> installed (I had to configure the network information, etc., again).  This
> time I let the installer install all of the packages, and then assign the
> root password, user account, etc.

The new installer selected by upstream is *not* good. The spoke and
wheel model is pretty silly, because it's all simply mapped into an
ordinary flow chart model executed by anaconda under the hood.
Remapping a flow chart program to an entirely new  mental model of the
process to which it bears no actual programming resemblance, just to
present a different GUI, was a very, very silly choice. Combined with
its layout being inconsistent and confusing, and it violates every
single one of Eric Raymond's guidelines for open source interfaces at
"his old essay "The Luxury of Ignorance", at
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html. This includes the
extra guidelines I sent him and which he added later as a postscript
at the bottom.

It's prettier, but succumbs to the Gnome and systemd model of "pull
everything into a pretty tool" rather than segregating and executing
simple steps well with limited, but very effective, tools.

> There are a limited number of default configurations.  However, there seems
> to be no way to choose the specific packages to install.  Is the assumption
> that these will be done post-install?
>
> Yasha Karant

As I remember when I did this 2 months ago, it was a pain to find.
(See my notes above about the silly graphical interface.) . These
days, post-install or kickstart is safer. It can also be much faster
to set up a kickstart file, or a set of them, that you can put under
source control and have well defined initial configurations. If you've
the inclination and the resources, you can even set up PXE and have a
"re-install from scratch" or "start me with a rescue image" option.
Just don't set them as defaults unless you want to scrub and replae
the OS every time you boot.