new sysinstall

[Robert Garrett]

Garance A Drosihn wrote:

> At 7:25 PM +0000 9/2/03, Tobias Weingartner wrote:
>>Matthew Dillon wrote:
>>>
>>>      Summary so far of "How to rewrite sysinstall".
>>>
>>  >     * Make CDRom #1 a fully live image, allowing the system
>>  >       to boot into a complete environment.  ...
>>
>>This is a good thing...
>>
>>  >     * Split a normal installation into two stages.
>>  >       Stage 1 is responsible for [...] and reboots.
>>  >       Stage 2 is responsible for [...]
>>
>>I like this idea.  Especially the automated one... but if it
>>requires a reboot after stage 1, it defeats the purpose...  As
>>then I have to go fiddle with the bios 3 times for each machine
>>in order to get a lab full of computers up.
>>
>>1) Enable CD-ROM & CD-ROM boot
>>2) Boot CD-ROM
>>3) Disable CD-ROM boot
>>4) Boot disk/install
>>5) Disable CD-ROM
> 
> Note that list is what you may have to do.  My list is considerably
> different, due to our hardware and our requirements.  I think it's
> a bit of an exaggeration to claim that extra reboot will defeat the
> purpose of everything else.  And even with your list, I don't see
> why you do step 3 as step 3, instead of just waiting until step 5
> to disable both things.  Probably your hardware is just different
> than the hardware I'm used to.  If you're doing a lab, I suspect
> you'd want to set up some server to handle all the stage 2
> processing, so you could remove the CD after step #2 in your list.
> 
> In any case, I strongly hope that:
>    1) dragonfly would also support some sort of net install,
>       which avoids most of this issue.
>    2) if you do boot up off the dragonfly CD, you will first
>       see a prompt which allows you to switch the booting
>       process from the CD to the just-installed hard disk.
>       Me, I'd rather boot up directly from the hard disk just
>       to make sure step #1 went OK, but if someone did boot
>       up off the CD then they could still switch to the hard
>       disk without having to reboot yet-again.
> 

with the discussed topology it would be very possible to do a net 
install via http, complete with configuration, hell all we would have
to do is enable dhcp on the first boot stage, with an option to 
contact a installation server to configure it's disks..
reboot and contact the installation server to finish the installation.
and configure it.

Rob
live..