Frank Ludolph wrote: > Dave Miner wrote: >> Sarah Jelinek wrote: >>> Hi Sue, >>> >>> Some comments on disk selection proposals: >>>> Proposed Functional Design for Default Disk Selection >>>> ----------------------------------------------------- >>>> One disk on x86 system >>>> a) Look for solaris2 partition to use. If found, use it and create >>>> vtoc >>>> b) If partitions exist, but no solaris2 partition exists, but there >>>> is space for creating solaris2 >>>> partition, create it and use it. >>>> c1) If partitions exist, but no solaris2 partition exists, and no >>>> space exists to create one, ask user >>>> if they want to use whole disk or use a partition on disk (list the >>>> partitions). If partition is chosen, >>>> use it and make solaris 2 partition. Or user could quit and do >>>> fdisk/format. >>>> >>> >>> How exactly would we ask the user? I am a bit uncomfortable with >>> this approach since it is supposed to be a hands off install. Which >>> means we automatically succeed or we automatically fail. I would >>> think the text based installer would be used, eventually, in the >>> event a user wants an interactive install experience. >>> >>> Baking in behavior that requires user input in some scenarios seems >>> contrary to what we want to provide with AI. >>> >> >> More directly: it doesn't meet the requirements. Automated >> installations must succeed (or fail) entirely without interactive >> input. Is there any way in which this requirement is unclear? >> > The requirement is clear but the impact of the hands-off failure on > the user experience is significant. Because an install will overwrite > data, the disk/partition/slice defaults should be pretty tight which > in turn raises the likelihood of failure. > > Once an install fails it is no longer hands-off. The user must take > corrective action, in this case either reformatting a disk to match > the disk selection criteria, or more likely editing a manifest and > creating a new service. The latter is the right thing to do for a > production environment (though time might be an issue in some > instances), but it places a high hurdle for first time users > evaluating UI using the default manifest. Asking the user to > interactively designate a disk and possibly a partition/slice in the > event of disk selection failure, rather than simply failing outright, > can greatly simplify the initial out-of-box experience. > Hi Frank,
I understand your concerns about the user experience. however, let me paint a different scenario than one that might have been considered previously. -The user starts 1000 AI installs via some scripts. None of the systems being installed have a 'head' for the user to monitor the installation. They rely on 'pinging' or some other mechanism to determine if the install succeeded. In the case being proposed above, the user wouldn't know why the system was 'hung', waiting for their input. And, they would not likely be aware that AI went interactive without their specific intervention. So, introducing interactive behavior is really unexpected from the users point of view. One thought I had that we might consider is a way for the user to tell AI to go 'interactive' in the event of a failure. That is, the default behavior is always automatic, but in the case where users know they can manage the systems being installed, allow them to enable this interactive experience in the event of failures. We meet the requirements for AI by doing this, I believe. Thoughts? thanks, sarah ***** > I'm not suggesting that AI should initiate user interaction in other > failure modes. Disk selection happens very early in the install > process when the user might still be observing that the installation > has properly started and is proceeding properly - there are progress > messages being sent the the target machine's console. > > To Sarah's question of where the interaction would be done, the answer > is the target machine's console where the progress messages are being > printed. If there are concerns about visibility of the console the > interaction could time out and fail the install after several (10?) > minutes. > > Frank > >
