We've had some discussion around media options in regards to the some of the forthcoming installers.
While the text installer options are going to be discussed in the meeting tomorrow, I wanted to capture the results of the discussion wrt bootable AI and regular AI image here. Currently the only known consumer for a bootable AI image on x86 is the VMC project. The requirements the VMC project has on a bootable AI image are listed in the func spec - http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/caiman/VMC/ >From a high level, the project would like to - - boot the AI image standalone (without the need for an AI server) - have the auto-installer service obtain a manifest to install from, from a well defined location - kick off an IPS based install and once down shutdown the VM Given these requirements, I think it makes a lot of sense to combine the bootable AI and regular AI images for x86. How would it work? ------------------ DC would be changed such that all x86 images created are bootable. The choices of a media based boot, network based boot (no AI) and network based boot with AI would be provided in the GRUB menu. Media based boot would be the default selection. At the time the AI image is setup on the AI server using installadm, network based boot (no AI) would be made the default selection. If a hands off installation is intended, the "default" parameter in the GRUB menu.lst on the AI server can be tweaked to indicate network based boot with AI as the default [1]. In the case of a media based boot, the machine would boot off of the media and the auto-installer service would look for a "default" manifest to install from (discussion of a default manifest is deliberately omitted for now). Installation would be performed depending upon what is specified in the manifest. In the case of a network based boot (no AI), the machine would boot off of the network and disable the auto-installer service. In the case of a network based boot with AI, the machine would boot off of the network, do service discovery and kick off AI. A new version of the live-fs-root SMF method specific to AI will be created as part of this work. Comments? Thanks, Alok [1] This ties back in to Section 5.7 of the AI client functional specification. http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/caiman/auto_install/ai_design/ai_client_func_spec.pdf
