sysinstall v2

[Matthew Dillon]

:Why not forget DHCP as it needs to die anyways and look at 
:Rendevous/zeroconf
:functionality added not just to the installer but all together....
:
:-DR

    DHCP is more likely to work out of the box, no?  It's a universal
    protocol.

    We could also implement a push environment... you boot the machine
    up with the CDRom and in addition to all the options you see the CD
    boot would also automatically run dhclient and 'pull' a root password
    from a DHCP supplied or local DNS server supplied address.  If it is
    able to successfully pull a root password it automatically starts up
    sshd, apache, and other configuration services in the background
    without you having to lift a finger.

    A sequence like this:

    * boot the machine with the CD
    * machine automatically pulls DHCP config, queries DNS for a TXT 
      record in the 'dragonfly.' domain (maybe use DNSSEC? for security?),
      and starts various services including a broadcast responder.

    * at his desk the sysop runs:

    % dragoncfg -q	# query LAN for CD-booted dragonfly boxes
      [ lists IP addresses, ether MACs, etc... ]

    * sysop then opens a browser to the IP address and configures away, or
      ssh's to the IP address, or just blasts a configuration into the
      machine using dragoncfg install ... (program not yet written, of course).
      etc.

    The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the CD starting up
    some basic remote-access services.  If we can solve the security issues
    involved with doing that I think it would be very useful.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>