Sysinstall
Encyclopedia
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Sysinstall, also known as sysinstall(8), is the graphical FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
system installation and configuration tool. It was written in C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
by Jordan Hubbard
Jordan Hubbard
Jordan K. Hubbard is a long-time open source developer, authoring software like the Ardent Window Manager and various other open source tools and libraries before finally co-founding the FreeBSD project. He started the FreeBSD project in 1993 with Nate Williams and Rodney W. Grimes, also creating...
, is curses
Curses (programming library)
curses is a terminal control library for Unix-like systems, enabling the construction of text user interface applications.The name is a pun on the term “cursor optimization”. It is a library of functions that manage an application's display on character-cell terminals .- Overview :The curses API...
based and first appeared in FreeBSD 2.0.
Sysinstall is the first utility started by a FreeBSD boot floppy or cdrom and is mostly used to install FreeBSD on a new system or do basic post install configuration tasks. It can be run interactively through its text-based menu driven interface (which is the default) or in batch mode following a script provided by the user.
According to its man page
Manual page (Unix)
Man pages are the extensive documentation that comes preinstalled with almost all substantial Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The Unix command used to display them is man. Each page is a self-contained document.- Usage :...
entry sysinstall is "at the end of its life cycle and will eventually be replaced" and furthermore is "a prototype which lasted several years past its expiration date and is greatly in need of death." finstall, which was accepted as a Summer of code project, aims to create a user-friendly graphical installer for FreeBSD. However it is not intended to replace sysinstall.
Beginning with FreeBSD 9.0, BSDInstall will replace Sysinstall as the default FreeBSD installer.