On 03/25/09 11:33 AM, 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. >
It is interesting, but the above set of requirements, most likely for a server environ, most closely matches our needs for OpenSolaris factory pre-install of developer laptops like our Toshiba offering. In that case, the factory requirements are; - Network install of OpenSolaris with specific partition sizes. - add packages from several different repos. - add some third party packages. - add some configuration data. - add some custom desktop links. It's a very similar set of add-on and config requirements. As things were (January), we had to build up one image on one machine, and literally use "dd" to copy disks. > 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 >>
