On Sat, Nov 27, 1999 at 09:53:01AM -0700, Tim Rightnour wrote:
> Well.. one of my major goals was the ability to parse an incoming datafile and
> just skip the whole asking questions phase of the install.  If a combined
> sysinst-postinst could do that.. thats fine with me.. and could be separated
> out later if desired.

It's mine too :)

> Actually sysinst sorta-allready has code in it for that.  If you used a gui
> like CDK (curses development kit) it has a log-window widget with scrollback
> and everything.. very slick.

Is this part of curses or ncurses ?
We have various problems with ncurses, including space on the boot media.

> 
> One real big advantage of allowing some sort of wildcarding or fuzzy matching
> in the input file specs, would be the ability to supply generic configs for
> systems.  Example:
> 
> We could ship a basic config.. that has wd/sd0 configured with root, usr, swap
> and the rest of the disk 50/50 for /src and /pkg.  Sysinst would then ask for
> the IP stuff, and the media gunk, and the system would just install.

Not that easy to implement. in case of multiple disks, finding the bootable
one is at last port-dependant and can even be impossible to find in some case.
I'm not sure it's worth it.
I think we should go wth a less generic solution, and ship a file (or several
files) for common cases (e.g. root on wd0).

> 
> An admin could configure a file that got an IP from dhcp or a list or
> something, and could mass install netbootable sparcs off the network with one
> file, hands-free.

That's the goal, yes.

> 
> The main reason I wanted sysinst/postinst separated would be to allow it to
> work in two stages.. (eventually, not as a first step).. but imagine the
> following:
> 
> fire up CD, load sysinst.. answer disk size/ip/media questions.  Present user
> with a list of packages, pick the packages.  Present user with an rc.conf menu,
> and configure.  call postinst.
> 
> Postinst would install, put postinst in /etc/rc, and reboot.  Machine boots in
> stage two, postinst configures rc.conf, and starts installing packages.  It
> finishes, removes itself from rc, and reboots.

This mean that we would have some duplicate functionality (partition,
installation of the base system, network config) in sysinst and postinst.
Or do you mean sysinst should be able to parse the file as well ?

> 
> Just some future ideas, for why I wanted to see it separated.  You are right,
> it wouldn't need to be.. but it might be easier to do.  For example a more
> slender postinst would ship on the media, and the full-blown one would be part
> of base, and allow the packages, rc, etc..

We would still have 2 programs which are able to do the same thing ...
Maybe we need more than 2 ?

--
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
--