Hi everyone.
Last week I thought I had sewn up the issue around how to deal with
network configuration and the text-mode DDU. This morning it came up
again. It seems to come down to how important network configuration
is/isn't in the text-mode DDU context.
1) Should the text-mode DDU configure the network if necessary? I
anticipate that NWAM will be brought up by default, and it will work
when the network has DHCP. But what if DHCP is lacking or there is some
other reason why the network is unavailable to the system? Should the
DDU display network configuration screens to fix the system to work on
the network?
Some think it is enough to allow for network setup in the installer
itself; this would mean, though that after setting up the net in the
installer, they would have to quit the installer to run the DDU. Sounds
like a rats-maze to me. Some think DDU functionality should be part of
the installer. (This would be a radical departure from our current path.)
If the answer to (1) is yes...
2) The network config screens and functionality I planned would be coded
in a library common to both the text-installer and the DDU (for
consistency, efficiency of coding, and maintainability). However, some
think that the functionality of network configuration is too broad to be
encapsulated in a common library (or a few common functions), and that
something could change at a different code level in the future, which
would require duplicate code changes elsewhere. I don't think so, but
I'm no expert, which is one reason why I seek your opinion.
3) If network configuration screens are displayed, why not do a screen
to configure a name service? I saw email earlier today suggesting this
was a bad idea, but having it would allow one to specify a system name
instead of just an IP address. This sounds like a much better user
experience to me. Is it really not important?
Thanks,
Jack
