Glenn Lagasse wrote: > Hi Jack, > > * Jack Schwartz (Jack.A.Schwartz at Sun.COM) wrote: > >>> Dave: Note that it's the boot after installation that this is run >>> so driver HBA for installation should not be an issue. >>> >> No, it's not the boot after installation. Driver Update is run >> *before* the installation, so the installer can take advantage of >> any devices which had missing drivers in a Live CD or text-install >> environment. >> >> I see the issue about error handling... There's already a >> notification popup which displays if one or more devices are missing >> a driver after the silent mode auto-installation. If there are >> errors, we can just display in the popup that errors occurred and 1) >> to check a logfile for details, 2) tell the user to try again. In >> interactive mode there should be some way of seeing an error. >> >> Frank, your thoughts? >> >> >>> That said, I too have concerns about "silently" downloading >>> anything. Such actions often arouse people suspicions. I am not >>> sure I quite understand the rationale behind "silently" >>> downloading drivers. While the notification does not have to be >>> intrusive, some kind of notification is required IMO. >>> >> I think we should only automatically download packages which have >> been properly tested by us (part of ON). Other drivers, such as >> third-party drivers, would have to be explicitly, interactively >> installed. >> > > Why do 'properly tested' drivers get different treatment than third-party > drivers (which can arguably also be properly tested)?. Most users I > dealt with in my support days really didn't like surprises. Downloading > drivers 'behind their backs' while might make the 'I want my hardware to > just work' crowd happy, you're going to upset the 'I want to know what's > going on' crowd (most Enterprise level consumers in my experience). I > think notification in all cases isn't a bad thing. It simplifies the > code as well. What are you saving/achieving by downloading a class of > drivers silently vs others interactively? You'll also possibly run into > support questions of 'why was I prompted for driver y before installing > but driver x just showed up?' > The drivers being silently installed are ones that would have been installed from the installation media if there were space for them. Currently all drivers in pkg.opensolaris.org are on the media, I believe, so no drivers would be installed silently, but that could change as we constantly fight for media space. The term third-party is misleading in this respect as there are third-party drivers on pkg.opensolaris.org. Note that while I'm referring to opensoloaris.org, distributions built from a different repo would silently load drivers from that repo. Drivers from the source repo can be considered "tested and trusted" to some degree. This should address concerns about knowing what's going on as everything is from the same source.
The DDU catalog can contain links to drivers from other sources, e.g. third-party repos or alternate distribution repos or even third-party websites. We don't have control over these sources. Users should explicitly load drivers from these sites so that they do know what's going on and not blame opensolaris if there are subsequent problems with these drivers. Frank
