Re: Reorganizing install CDs

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On 11 March 2012 15:18, Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I had to install a DragonFly system recently and I think we should think
> about one idea they implemented in their install CD system: their CD
> images are always "live" CDs, you can either log in as "root" w/o password
> and use the full system or as "installer" and get into their installer.
>
> That is not what I would do, but given that we now can produce "live"
> setups for CDs or usb sticks, and we run install CDs multiuser with a
> speciall gettytab, it should be easy to adopt the basic idea.
>
> From a users perspective, after booting the CD/USB stick, you would
> see an optional menu on serial console asking for the terminal type,
> and then drop into a new menu offering:
>
>  (a) Install/Update NetBSD
>  (b) Run NetBSD "live" for testing or recovery
>  (x) Restart the machine
>
> or something along those lines. If you select (b), the custom gettytab is
> replaced by the full grown one (but optionally with fixed term types from the
> step before this menu) and /etc/rc completes as in a fresh installed system.
>
> If you chose (a), the custom gettytab is used for a script invoking sysinst,
> but with some changes (see below).
>
> The changes needed for this are mostly straight forward:
>
>  - fully populate the image (for install CDs we currently only use a tiny
>   subset of the system). This means the image will grow a bit.
>  - move all install data into some subdirectory (it now clobbers the root,
>   this move is kindof esthetical)
>  - move sysinst into /usr/sbin (see other discussion recently) or to the
>   same place the data moved, and invoke it with -i $(data-dir).
>  - tune a few scripts involved, implement above new menu
>
> A big optional task is: on archs where our in-tree X can be reasonably
> expected to safely work without configuration, fire up xdm and provide
> some reasonable defaul xsession configuration. This is tricky from a
> license/marketing point of view, not to mention the problem agreeing on
> such a "resonable" configuration (and we should ignore that part for the
> moment).

Agreed - the base text live image option would be enough of a win.

> What I am not sure about: is the new menu (instead of going straigth into
> the installer) a good thing to have? Should it have a timeout (say: 20
> seconds) and then run the installer by default?

How about providing this as another (optional) item on the main
sysinst menu - if sysinst detects it is
running in such an environment.

Presumably the system will need to union mount a tmpfs or similar over
/etc, and on /var?

> The pros and cons otherwise are pretty obivous:
>
>  - only two images needed (CD and USB), no special install image
>  - image size is bigger than before (with the X option, significantly bigger)

For (say) amd64 would that give the following installer images
- ramdisk kmod
- floppy ramdisk files
- CD live ISO image
- USB live disk image

Would the USB image be expected to work if dd'd to the start of a HD,
or used as a disk image in an emulator?  If so it opens up the scope
for use on platforms which cannot boot from USB.

> What do you think?

I think this is an excellent idea  :)