Bug 41820

Summary:	Device driver confusion in Handbook (section 2.3)
Product:	Documentation	Reporter:	Jerry Dunham <jdunham>
Component:	Books & Articles	Assignee:	Remko Lodder <remko>
Status:	Closed FIXED
Severity:	Affects Only Me
Priority:	Normal
Version:	Latest
Hardware:	Any
OS:	Any

Description Jerry Dunham 2002-08-20 18:10:03 UTC

      I'm installing 4.6, working from the Handbook for the first time.
As I worked through section 2.3 I found that the Active-drivers screen,
with its long list of conflicting hardware I'd never seen before, conflicted
with the device probe screen that followed.  A friend informed me that the
first screen was attempting (and not well) to deal with ISA cards (of which
I have none) and the device probe screen was attempting (and doing well)
to deal with PCI cards.  I would never have figured this out from the
explanation in 2.3, and spent some time frozen at that point of the install
before I learned that all was really okay.

Fix: 

Add some explanation of the two different device driver screens and
explain that if you have a PCI-only machine you don't really need to worry
about what shows in the Active-drivers screen.
How-To-Repeat:       Install 4.6 on a PCI system working from the Handbook, section 2.3.

Comment 1 Josh Paetzel 2002-08-20 18:29:18 UTC

I think this is a case of information overload.  This section of the
handbook contains an incredible amount of information, and attempting to
be completely comprehensive would make it even worse.  With today's
hardware, 99% of the FreeBSD installs could choose skip kernel config,
and the GENERIC kernel would probe everything just fine.  The only
people that really need to deal with the visual config at all are those
that are either installing from a scsi cdrom hanging on a antique ISA
host adapter, or those who are installing from an ISA NIC.  Perhaps we
could put in a disclaimer at the top of the section, "If you are
installing on a machine with PCI/AGP/Onboard devices only, please pick
skip kernel configuration, and jump to section 2.3.3"

My .02 on the issue.

Josh

Comment 2 Jerry Dunham 2002-08-20 23:33:15 UTC

I agree with the disclaimer completely.  I say, "Do it!"  It would have
saved me time and a couple of e-mail messages.  I can't imagine how it
would hurt anyone.

Thanks!
--
Jerry Dunham
M3 Design, Inc.
jdunham@m3designinc.com
(512) 218-8858

Comment 3 Remko Lodder freebsd_committer

2006-08-29 20:39:46 UTC

State Changed
From-To: open->closed

The section had been rewritten and the information cannot be 
found any longer. 

Reported by:	Niclas Zeising on freebsd-doc

Comment 4 Remko Lodder freebsd_committer

2006-08-29 20:39:46 UTC

Responsible Changed
From-To: freebsd-doc->remko

Grab the PR since I closed it, so I should be responsible.