Alok Aggarwal wrote: > 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. All x86 based images, including the current AI image, is already bootable. > > 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]. I think that when DC creates the image, only 1 option should be added to the GRUB menu. The option is to boot from media. When the image is used for setting up the GRUB menu, the installadm command need to alter the GRUB menu anyway. At that time, it can add the 2 other network boot entries. I think this is more clear, because if we include the 2 GRUB network boot entries when we build the AI image, and people just boot the image from media and choose the 2 network entries, things won't work, and it will be more confusing.
--Karen
