* Dave Miner (Dave.Miner at Sun.COM) wrote: > Jean McCormack wrote: >> Jens Deppe wrote: >>> >>> >>> Jean McCormack wrote: >>>> Jens Deppe wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Jean McCormack wrote: >>>>>> Jens Deppe wrote: >>>>>>> Hi Jean, >>>>>>> >>>>>>> One comment inline... >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On 05/21/09 14:19, Jean McCormack wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Progress Reporting: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The output to the console to reflect the progress of the >>>>>>>> auto-install should be of the format: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> (pseudo progress bar) High level description of current >>>>>>>> functionality >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Example (general idea, wording is not exact) : >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> (.....................) Discovering available services >>>>>>>> (..... ) Choosing service >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The .'s indicate percentage completion. This means we have >>>>>>>> a dependency upon IPS to supply size information for the >>>>>>>> packages. >>>>>>>> A return is only implemented when the install moves from >>>>>>>> one major block of functionality to the next. Otherwise, >>>>>>>> the text is overwritten with updates to the dots to >>>>>>>> indicate progress. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The use of virtual console was considered as a possibility >>>>>>>> if a more detailed progress >>>>>>>> is required. Preliminary investigation indicates that this >>>>>>>> currently is not in our microroot and would >>>>>>>> be too large to include there. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Please consider enabling the log file to be >>>>>>> retrieved/accessed remotely. Simply exposing it via an http >>>>>>> service would be a *big* help. Especially when installing >>>>>>> systems remotely. >>>>>> Does this meet your needs? >>>>>> >>>>>> The log file will also be written to the AI server at >>>>>> /var/ai/client_logs/ip_address/install_log. >>>>> >>>>> Not really as we are (for now) not using the AI server to >>>>> provision clients and deliver the manifests. (We're using a Begin >>>>> service to derived the manifest). >>>>> >>>>> So, what mechanism/protocol will be used to move the install log >>>>> from client to server? Will it be streamed during the install or >>>>> only sent once the install completes? >>>> Streamed during the install. >>> >>> So is the source exposed on the client via http or some other common >>> means whereby we could monitor it without relying on the AI server? >> At this point, there's no plan for that. You could build a custom ai >> image with ssh enabled and ssh to the system. However, be aware there >> are security concerns with doing so. See the caiman-discuss discussion >> with respect to this. >> > > Recall that ssh isn't enabled because the use of well-known passwords > makes the system essentially wide open to compromise during the > installation period, but allowing some *controlled* means of monitoring > the installation directly with the client seems worth considering.
I apologize being late to this discussion. The VM constructor project is planning to make use of an AI client to perform a hands-off automated install inside a virtual machine in order to provide pre-constructed vm images. To support this, we'll need a bootable automated installer image that doesn't require a webserver setup. That's not really relevant to this discussion, what is relevant is in the area of observability. Ideally we would like to be able to monitor and react to events going on inside the VM while the AI client is performing it's installation. In a hands-off manner of course. Things like error conditions, progress reporting, and completion status so that we can report to the user running the distribution constructor what's going on and react appropriately to problems. So we would need something like what Dave proposes for allowing some controlled means of monitoring the installation directly with the client. Perhaps that's some 'server' like process running on the client that interested parties can connect to and receive data or something else. Whatever the implementation, we would need the data presented in such a way as that we can easily (relative term) relay that information to the user (and the DC logs) about what's going on as well as dealing with any errors that crop up during the various steps of the installation. -- Glenn
