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Date:      Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:46:00 +0000
From:      Kris Moore <kris@pcbsd.org>
To:        Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org, freebsd-geom@freebsd.org, Devin Teske <dteske@vicor.com>, Randi Harper <randi@freebsd.org>, "Andrey V. Elsukov" <bu7cher@yandex.ru>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no>, Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@leidinger.net>, Marian Hettwer <mh@kernel32.de>
Subject:   Re: [RFC] Rewriting sade(8)
Message-ID:  <4BBDFA38.1050208@pcbsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <m2j7d6fde3d1004081115u7d86b8dat2a13ec4c4502cd5b@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <55861270658151@web135.yandex.ru>	<20100408121500.13995d1eu7b9bt0k@webmail.leidinger.net>	<86fx36up9e.fsf@ds4.des.no>	<20100408155309.42884l21ogy7m7sw@webmail.leidinger.net>	<86vdc2t4hs.fsf@ds4.des.no>	<20100408163936.137245fp5ycrre0w@webmail.leidinger.net>	<4BBDB5BC.3060002@pcbsd.org>	<e76b392c4fd8f0563c66743b7efde9a2@localhost>	<4BBDD0B9.3060902@pcbsd.org>	<1270746097.29753.106.camel@localhost.localdomain> <m2j7d6fde3d1004081115u7d86b8dat2a13ec4c4502cd5b@mail.gmail.com>

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On 04/08/2010 18:15, Garrett Cooper wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Devin Teske<dteske@vicor.com>  wrote:
>    
>> Randi and I were discussion the possibility of having sysinstall
>> "remember" what you did and then able to write out a suitable
>> `install.cfg' file that could be subsequently used to perform a human-
>> less automated install with the same settings.
>>      
>    

In a sense that's what our back-end / front-end is doing currently.

The program flow works like thus:

Front-end starts, queries all relevant information from back-end, Disks, 
Network Cards, etc,
then proceeds to walk the user through the steps gathering enough 
information to perform
an installation. This gives front-end control over its own data 
gathering logic from the user,
since the way I do something in a QT GUI may not work via command-line 
without a mouse
or the other way around.

When we are done gathering information, the front-end writes out an 
install.cfg directive
and starts the back-end processing it. The front-end then waits and 
displays backend output
to the user in a sane manner, allowing user to watch whats going on.

(example)
http://trac.pcbsd.org/browser/pcbsd/trunk/pc-sysinstall/examples/pcinstall.cfg.zfs

So with this method, its pretty much doing what you describe. Every 
install is a scripted
install, and if you want to do unattended installs, you can use the 
front-end to generate
all the options you want, copy and/or tweak the resulting config to be 
used again later.

If the backend is simply a library and not executable, then you'll end 
up needing
scripting support or ways to run one implemented directly in each 
front-end, which can get
messy to maintain across curses/gtk/qt/web, etc.


-- 
Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software
iXsystems




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