From owner-freebsd-sysinstall@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Feb 22 16:26:34 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D42DB1065672; Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:26:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nwhitehorn@freebsd.org) Received: from mail.icecube.wisc.edu (trout.icecube.wisc.edu [128.104.255.119]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5DFE08FC0A; Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:26:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by mail.icecube.wisc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id C0AFB582CD; Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:26:33 -0600 (CST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at icecube.wisc.edu Received: from mail.icecube.wisc.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (trout.icecube.wisc.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10030) with ESMTP id NyKcAvK-9aEW; Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:26:33 -0600 (CST) Received: from wanderer.tachypleus.net (i3-dhcp-172-16-223-170.icecube.wisc.edu [172.16.223.170]) by mail.icecube.wisc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 89C57582C3; Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:26:33 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <4D63E3B9.8030308@freebsd.org> Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:26:33 -0600 From: Nathan Whitehorn User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20110103 Thunderbird/3.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: John Baldwin References: <201102220745.45695.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <201102220745.45695.jhb@freebsd.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, grarpamp , freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Installer Roadmap X-BeenThere: freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Sysinstall Work List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:26:34 -0000 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.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. -Nathan