Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:14:57 -0500 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Installer Roadmap Message-ID: <201102221214.58073.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <4D63E3B9.8030308@freebsd.org> References: <AANLkTi=VM1qGLrvjDJnhafi5=B4DCmL85CKmyOF7t9Sp@mail.gmail.com> <201102220745.45695.jhb@freebsd.org> <4D63E3B9.8030308@freebsd.org>
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On Tuesday, February 22, 2011 11:26:33 am Nathan Whitehorn wrote: > On 02/22/11 06:45, John Baldwin wrote: > > On Saturday, February 19, 2011 4:34:11 am grarpamp wrote: > >> Sysinstall is fine, as I'm sure any replacement will be. So I'll > >> just note a few things I'd like to see in any such replacement... > >> > >> 1 - I used install.cfg's on floppies to clone systems, a lot. Hands > >> on the box were needed with that. Operators skills were in question, > >> so having them use the dialog menus properly was a pain and often > >> resulted in non-zeroed disk or half built systems. And though all > >> else was cloned, it needed a separate<host>.cfg for each box due > >> to: > >> > >> fqdn, gateway, ip/mask > >> interface - sometimes changed > >> root disk - sometimes changed > >> > >> Would have killed for a simple console shell script to ask those > >> questions of the operator, per machine. > > > > Actually, you can do that if you are a bit creative (add a few more tools to > > the mfsroot, and use the 'system' command in install.cfg to invoke a shell > > script that then generates a foo.cfg you later include via loadConfig, but > > I've covered that at multiple conferences by now). That said, I'm hopeful > > that the new installer will be more flexible in less hackish ways while > > letting you do things like PXE boot to a shell where you can use mfiutil to > > create a RAID-5 volume and then invoke the installer on that, etc. > > This is something that I very explicitly built in to the design of > bsdinstall. When the installer starts (as well as at several other > points), you are offered an option to bring up a shell specifically to > do things like this. Scripted installs are just shell scripts instead of > a configuration file, so it is trivial to interleave complicated things > like this. Yes, I should have worded it a bit differently in that I do actually think that is true from what little I have seen and the "hopeful" bit more refers to my being able to adopt it locally. -- John Baldwin
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