tl:dr: yes, I agree with the OP - that step could be more informative and it would be a good idea to include further confirmation before effectively writing changes to the disk/MBR. ---------- Hi everybody, I'm new here and I have been trying OpenBSD for the past couple of weeks, and finally today I joined the mailing list. It was funny (and sad at the same time) to read this unfortunate event that happened with Leonardo, and it was particularly interesting to me because as a newcomer to the OpenBSD world I also struggled with the disk partitioning step and his story could very well be mine. I also ran into a huge risk when installing it into my computer's hard disk drive trying to achieve a dual boot setup.
Luckily, I first installed OpenBSD a dozen times on a VM to get an idea of dealing with the OpenBSD installation, package management, etc. After learning what I considered enough to get my hands dirty and performing a real installation I burned the iso into a cd and began the process. However, I had forgotten that I would be required to create the OpenBSD partition because every time I installed it on the VM I had choose the whole disk option. But I wasnt careless, and choose the custom layout option. However, the next step wasn't very practical for a newbie like me to easily visualize what exactly I had to do, how to do it and where it would be made. At this point I just felt it wasn't woth the risk and then I simply power off the machine by holdind the power button down. Back to windows I did some googling about dual boot setups. Found some info who said what I should do but not how to do it. What I found was that I should use fdisk to select the desired partition and mark it as OpenBSD partition (A6). Ok, another try and I'm back staring at the disk partitioning tool, however I cold not guess wich was the correct partition I should select, because the information was displayed in bytes, not GBs, and the OpenBSD partition I had created was of similar size to another three partitions already in place. Back to windows I decided to use Easeus partition magic to change the filetype of the partition I had previously created for openBSD to ext2 for better visualization. Finished it I was back to the openbsd install and finally could identify the correct partition I was looking for and succeded at installing it without erasing all my data. The final step was to go back to windows and use a tool named EasyBCD to add the OpenBSD partition to the boot menu and I finally had my dualboot setup in place. Well as you guys can see installing openbsd is a bit complicated for newbies like me, and I got thing done as I could. The possibility to have all your data wiped instantly because of a very simplistic installer could be, indeed, a big turn off for new, inexperienced ( and sometimes careless) users. Some linux instalers i used are more straightforward and certainly help people like me to perform a succesfull install the way we want it without screwing everything up. Can the installer improve? Yes. Is it a technical challenge to implement further assistance? I dont know. What I do know is that it would be a very nice addition to the curent installer in my opinion. Just my 2 cents.
