On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Peter Tribble wrote: > On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Alok Aggarwal<Alok.Aggarwal at sun.com> wrote: >> Currently the Caiman architecture supports two types >> of installers - a LiveCD based GUI and AI. Each of these installation >> environments are different in that >> one is a desktop based environment while the other is >> not. As a result, they are both built on a different >> set of packages with AI being built on a significantly >> smaller set. >> >> As we provide more installation environments in the future >> (text based interactive install, a media based AI and possibly a network >> based text install), I think there are a couple of high order issues that >> need to be sorted out. >> >> a) What kind of an image should these new installers >> (text, media based AI) be based on? Since both these >> installers are not going to offer a desktop installation >> environment, does it make sense to base them on the >> same set of packages as AI? I think it would be a >> reasonable starting point. > > Turning that around, why would they be different? > > As I see it, AI is just an interactive install with all he questions already > answered so they get skipped. The way I see an interactive install > is as a dialogue for the user to create the desired profile as they go. > And one of the questions for an "interactive" install (including from a > LiveCD) might be "give me a location to get a manifest from and I'll > install according to that". (Or even an "invoke AI" option to make it > search.)
One of the reasons cited is that text or media based AI might want to do an install from media itself as opposed to an IPS repo (a la LiveCD install). A LiveCD set of packages would make sense in this case. That said, I really need to go back and gather requirements before solidifying the proposal. >> b) Assuming some of these installers get delivered as >> part of the same AI image, how should the selection >> between which installer to use be made? The two obvious >> choices are to provide them via the GRUB menu or as a >> separate menu item that comes up as part of boot (kind of >> like the keyboard and language selection menu in the >> current LiveCD installer). I think one of the underlying >> requirement here is to allow this to be scriptable. Also, >> a consistent user experience on both sparc and x86 would >> be nice. A separate menu items seems better on both counts. > > How do you define scriptable? > > This goes back to the AI discussion we had a while back about > how to invoke the auto-installer. It's the same image. On sparc, a > regular boot goes interactive; adding the install flag kicks off AI. > On x86, you get a grub menu with the same choices. (For network > based installs, you get the network server to set the default option in > the list if you want full automation.) Yes, that is another aspect to keep in mind while designing the solution. One of the main differences, however, wrt the media based AI image is that it's a standalone image and there isn't a network server present. Alok
