Re: [gentoo-dev] Installer For Gentoo

[Patrick Lauer]

On Wed, 2004-01-14 at 17:02, Stephen Clowater wrote:
<snip>
> There are two things I think need to be cleared up first.
>
> In order for gentoo to become a distro that can be used in corprate
> enviornments, it needs an installer that can do much of the
> configurations on it. For example, if I have a rendering farm of 1000
> sgi machines, and I want to install gentoo on all of them, under the
> conventional systme, that just isnt pratical.
you could always create one "default" disk image and clone it ...

>  The end goal here is to have a
> graphical setup program (to aid newbie users, and keep corprate types
> happy) to, based on the existing hardware on a given machine, dynamicaly
> generate the most optimal settings and preform an install and some
> system configuration based on that.
>
GLIS + kudzu (hardware detection) + default metapackages

(e.g. "kde" , "development" , "webserver")
These metapackages could be empty ebuilds that depend on some default
packages.

>  Moreover, a managment system based on the installer would really
> be all gentoo needs to be on the same page as main stream distros like
> redhat, in terms of how friendly it is to green users, and how friendly
> it is to corprat types.
Do we want that? I changed to gentoo because it is not user-friendly
like RedHat or SuSE. I don't see why gentoo should be dumbed down, but
if you want an installer, feel free to create one. It's all about choice
:-)

> Secondly, it _is_ a bit of a pian to not have a
> wizard I can simply point and click thru.
How often do you install?
And doesn't GLIS do most of the configuration?
(I haven't used it, so I don't have an opinion)

>  I've had several freeBSD devs
> ask me when gentoo was going to get an installer, and I've heard alot of
> very knowledgeable linux users state that gentoo reall does need a
> install wizard of some sort.
I've heard many knowledgable linux users state that they learned a lot
about  while installing gentoo.

I'm not oposed to an installer per se, but I don't want a default
install forced upon me. 


> for USE, you can make a list that includes of any package selected by
> the user, that has a corrisponding entry in use.desc in
> /usr/portage/profiles
>
> after this we just make sure in the package list, the user chooses a
> cron dameon, and system logger, and add a few very common things (like
> netkit-telnetd) which can be checked as default
sounds ok.

> then after this its just the execution of the bootstrapping, the merge
> of system, then a merge of all the packages they have selected. The
> make.conf and use flags have already been set to optimal values, and
> compiled with the most appropriate cflags. hence giveing optimal
> preformance. Portage takes care of the rest.
But shouldn't we give a default binary install?
Most users don't want to wait while the system compiles and compiles ...

> The only other thing that we come to that we should find a good way to
> do is kernel configuration. I konw we can simply compile everything as
> modules by default, and let the the system load them on an as-needed
> basis. However, I am wondering if there is a particular pattern of
> regexs that can be used on /proc/pci to determine installed hardware? I
> know we can ascertain ide or scsi by looking at /proc/partions.
kernel config = genkernel?

> So in summery, using glis as our backend, we really only need to
>

> Drop this into a pretty gui, and gentoo has an installer. Which most
> people seem to agree would be a good thing (most recently, the mention
> of it in linuxjournal)
but then you need an ncurses based gui and a "graphical" (nice) installer
That might be a lot of work.

> Thre only remains two questions for me (in addition to the kernel
> quesiton) is (1) what is the lightest way to do this that will still
> yeild a pretty GUI (2) I know how to generate a make.conf on a x86, but
> how to do it on such arcs as sparc, hppa, and others?
pretty gui = Tk on XFree86?
	 Qt based?
etc. etc.

There are many options, and it will enlarge the install CD even more.

What I would prefer to an installer is a unified interface for all
configuration utilities (gcc-config, java-config, portage, ...)
and maybe some "simple" tools for webserver vhosting, network config
etc.

But that's just my opinion ;-)

Patrick


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