Hope you guys have better luck than me. Just so we don't lose what's 
gone before, here is the discussion during the initial AI design.

http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=254675&#254675

James Litchfield wrote:
> I thought Bill Walker made a good start but here are some examples from an
> in-progress effort at a major customer:
> 
> A) install a reduced subset of Solaris
> B) install Solaris patches
> C) install various third party software packages that come in Solaris 
> packages,
>     tar files or a script that installs the product (and may contain the 
> product itself).
> D) Patch installed products where patches are Solaris style patches or simply 
> new 
>     executables replacing old executables.
> E) Harden the system to meet customer security requirements where hardening 
> is,
>     at a minimum, turning off services and modifying system files and 
> directories.
> F) Add system tuning
> G) Configure Solstice Disk Suite
> H) Configure zones and resource pools and install the zones.
> 
> Customer likes the idea of flars in that they save time during the 
> installation.
> The reduced subset of Solaris reduces patching time and zone installation 
> time.
> 
> Jim Litchfield
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Glenn Lagasse <Glenn.Lagasse at Sun.COM>
> Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 11:11 am
> Subject: Re: Does the AI opensolaris autoinstallation have the post script    
> just like the postscripts in the jumpstart
> To: Lubomir Sedlacik <Lubomir.Sedlacik at Sun.COM>
> Cc: Casper.Dik at Sun.COM, "Eric J. Ray" <Eric.Ray at Sun.COM>, Jon.Aimone at 
> Sun.COM, luke woo <Shenglong.Wu at Sun.COM>, desktop-discuss at 
> opensolaris.org, nv-users at sun.com, nv_re at sun.com
> 
> 
>> * Lubomir Sedlacik (Lubomir.Sedlacik at Sun.COM) wrote:
>>> Casper.Dik at Sun.COM wrote:
>>>>> No, at this time those do not exist. That's deliberate. In many
>>>>> (most) cases, Jumpstart finish scripts exist to work around gaps in
>>>>> the feature set or implementation. We want to understand what the
>>>>> real requirements are and build those into the product.
>>>> Don't try that; after reading a large part of the AI opensolaris  
>>>> autoinstallation documentation I can only conclude that people have
>>>> read the jumpstart installation but they have no idea how jumpstart
>>>> is used in practice.
>>>>
>>>> First of all, everyone who uses jumpstart in a large environment
>>>> doesn't actually need to do anything when a new client is installed.
>>>>
>>>> Secondly, in a past live, I used the begin/finish script to customize
>>>> *everything* in a system.
>>> Seconded.
>>>
>>> E.g., at Solaris System Test we perform several hundreds of 
>> different  
>>> JumpStart installations (and upgrades) every week on a lab of ~400  
>>> machines.  Install begin/finish scripts give us the flexibility to  
>>> implement any customization we need, often being creative to work 
>> around  
>>> bugs in various development builds which actually allows us to 
>> install  
>>> the system and don't just pronounce the build dead in the water and 
>> drop  
>>> testing.  This functionality is absolutely essential for us.
>>>
>>> Lack of begin/finish script functionality would have a huge impact 
>> on  
>>> productivity of many teams in the company, forcing them to implement 
>>  
>>> various home brew workarounds since their requirements are unlikely 
>> to  
>>> change.
>> So, what exactly are people not understanding when we (the install team
>> working on this stuff) say 'provide us with concrete *requirements* of
>> what you *need* and not what you want'?  And saying 'we want jumpstart'
>> doesn't count.  Technology changes and moves on (and hopefully evolves
>> and gets better).
>>
>> The lack of begin/finish script functionality *may* have an impact on
>> teams if we don't actually provide some other mechanism that
>> accomplishes the same tasks that people have been using the begin/finish
>> script functionality in jumpstart for.  But until we get people to 'look
>> at the problem objectively' and provide us with useful data (real
>> requirements) instead of just saying 'we want begin/finish scripts'
>> we're not going to get anywhere.
>>
>> AI is different, intentionally so.  Among other things, we're actually
>> trying to improve automated installation of OpenSolaris.  Begin/finish
>> scripts was one possible solution to a myriad of problems.  Surely since
>> we're dealing with computers (that do what we program them to do) we can
>> define the problems that the begin/finish script solution solved and
>> implement better solutions for each problem rather than having the hodge
>> podge solution of people writing their own scripts that Sun then can't
>> easily support?  Maybe we can't come up with solutions, but until people
>> work with us by providing concrete requirements (other than just 'we
>> want begin/finish scripts') so that we can actually engineer something
>> we'll never know.
>>
>> My .02.
>>
>> -- 
>> Glenn
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> desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org


-- 
Mike Ramchand
Principal Field Technologist
Systems Practice
Sun Microsystems (UK)
Tel: +44 125 2421091, Ext: (70)21091, Mob: +44 780 1179593
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