On Mon, 19 Nov 2007, Bart Smaalders wrote:
> Moritz Willers wrote:
>> Now I know this is unlikely to happen, but I would like to throw this in
>> for consideration on whatever is being worked on:
>>
>> We have written a lot of packages that consist mainly of postinstall
>> scripts, i.e. not delivering any functionality, but merely adding to the
>> configuration of the system. Those packages caused us much grief as we
>> tried to adopt zones, cause us grief during upgrades of our systems
>> (where we tend to replace our in-house developed packages, but need to
>> skip those that do system configuration work), cause us grief as we are
>> looking at other provisioning systems...
>>
>> If here was a sysidcfg API we wouldn't have to do system configuration
>> through postinstall scripts in packages.
>>
>> Whilst I title this and mention a "sysidcfg API", I doubt that will ever
>> come to fruition. It merely is a plea to consider other system
>> configuration, but those provided by the OS install mechanism, and open
>> any future technologies so we as a user can hook into it.
>>
>> - mo (kind of hoping that this mail can be answered with a RTFM link to
>> the Caiman documentation:))
>>
>
> The IPS (Image Packaging System) project is working on a
> generic solution to the "run this at first restart" after
> service startup. This should be a much mor erobust solution
> to your problem, and provides a known context for execution.
<semi-rant> One of the frustrations of working with sysidcfg is that
there are no tools to allow you to scan/error-check a sysidcfg data
file. Even silly tools that'll identify simple typos in the keywords.
Instead, you are left to test/trouble-shoot by trial and error. And
this is time consuming and aggravating. It also does not help that
the available documentation spans Sol 8, 9, 10 and NV and you can
never tell if:
- there's an error in the doc(s)
- docs are out-of-date or your doc revision != binary revision
- newer versions of the binaries that parse the sysidcfg have been
released and you have not seen the accompying documenatation
- newer versions of the binaries that parse the sysidcfg have bugs
Using "the Google" also adds its fair share of confusion - even with
silly things like how the file should be formatted; with some people
saying "always indent with a tab", "always use spaces", always start
on a new-line; blah, blah, blah.
When a sysidcfg error does occur, sometimes you see an error message
flash momently on the screen just long enough for you to see it, but
not long enough for you to grok it! IOW - errors are not logged.
And most of the time, you don't see any error indications - but you
have to plod through the mind-numbing task of entering information via
the sys config dialogs - which serves to indicate some unknown failure
mode. </semi-rant>
Ignore my rant - it's a minor frustration on the overall scale of life
- but please consider addressing these frustrations in the new
installer.
<mini-rant>
An additional source of frustration is a silly bug or feature omission
that continues, unresolved for year after *year*.
</mini-rant>
I'm really hopefull that open-sourcing the new installer will allow
frustrated end-users to fix their own annoying bugs - many of which
are probably quite easy to fix - but never reach high enough priority
to divert the attention of highly talented kernel level developers.
PS: Any word on when the installer will be opened up?
Thanks for your time.
Regards,
Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. al at logical-approach.com
Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134 Timezone: US CDT
OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Apr 2005 to Mar 2007
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/ogb_2005-2007/
Graduate from "sugar-coating school"? Sorry - I never attended! :)
