I see a particular failure mode in netinstall very often. The router model comes up, I select it, I select the packages to load, I hit the install button. A fast message blips on the bottom line and immediately disappears, words to the effect of “sending proposal to router” (sorry, I don’t remember the exact text), and then the router line de-highlights and the install button stays gray for about 10 seconds while absolutely nothing happens. No “formatting” message, no loading packages. I can do it over and over and get the same failure every time.
In some cases, I can quit netinstall, re-launch it, choose the router line, choose “previous install”, and hit the install button, and the installation will occur normally.
Unfortunately, tonight I tried netinstalling a CCR1009 about a dozen times, trying every variation I could think of: three different versions of netinstall, just the system package, all packages, anything I could think of, before giving up and just resetting the configuration and then re-establishing it from an export. Complete failure, during scheduled downtime on a production machine.
Between this behavior and the behavior where netinstall just says “N packages selected” instead of actually installing them when you hit the install button, I find netinstall to be an overly fragile piece of software.