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Robin H. Johnson wrote: |
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| On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 12:02:52PM -0400, Stephen Clowater wrote: |
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|>Hi All, I've recived some good responses and seen some good discusion |
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|>from my inital post. |
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|> |
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|>There are two things I think need to be cleared up first. |
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|> |
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|>In order for gentoo to become a distro that can be used in corprate |
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|>enviornments, it needs an installer that can do much of the |
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|>configurations on it. For example, if I have a rendering farm of 1000 |
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|>sgi machines, and I want to install gentoo on all of them, under the |
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|>conventional systme, that just isnt pratical. |
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| |
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| Even the conventional redhat installs aren't practical for network-size |
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| installs. System imaging is definetly the way to go for the most part |
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| for such setups, but nothing should preclude having some automated |
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| program that can take a configuration file, so that I can boot off a CD, |
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| run a single command and leave the box going (or even integrate that |
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| command into the netboot/cd init). I've got 5 1/2 machines running |
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| Gentoo at home presently, 3 of those are for my development work only, |
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| and get re-installed approx once a month to test various things from a |
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| clean state. |
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| |
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| Cutting short most of the rest of your email here, with such an |
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| automated install, I'd far far prefer that the entire configuration can |
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| be specified explictly, and not be detected in any way. |
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|
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The configurations that are detected would only be the defaults, any |
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user who wanted to change them, or bypass the entire install |
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alltogether, could still do so. Indeed, you could specify a boot option |
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like noinstaller and do the install the old way, or flip over to another |
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vc (the installer would presumably be on vc/1) and continue the install |
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by the guide instead of the installer. |
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|
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Its important to note the last thing that an installer would do would be |
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to impose itself on the user. Its purpose is to provide some level of |
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confort and prettyness for those who would like it, and to detect the |
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most optimal defaults for a system, however, not to take away from the |
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user the ability to change these defaults. |
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| |
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| |
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|>Now, I know for the most part, what needs to be done to generate |
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|>configuration options on x86, what I am not sure about, is how to do it |
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|>on other archs, such as sparc or hppa. For example, CFLAGS for x86 in |
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|>make.conf are easy. |
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| |
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| I wrote genflags for this reason exactly (and I know that the CHOST |
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| value is wrong atm in it). It works on all platforms Gentoo does, and |
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| some Gentoo doesn't even. |
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| |
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| |
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|>for USE, you can make a list that includes of any package selected by |
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|>the user, that has a corrisponding entry in use.desc in |
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|>/usr/portage/profiles |
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| |
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| This is inherantly bad. As an example, I have mysql installed, but the |
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| ONLY package I compile with USE=mysql is PHP. Likewise I compile PHP |
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| with USE="-java -qt", as I don't want java or qt support in there. |
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hmmm, perhaps having global use flags based on the selected packages, |
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but have each package have the ability to override those USE flags when |
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slelected? (default setting would be whatever global USE is) |
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|
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| |
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| |
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|>after this we just make sure in the package list, the user chooses a |
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|>cron dameon, and system logger, and add a few very common things (like |
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|>netkit-telnetd) which can be checked as default |
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|
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heh....not for telnetd, just for telnet, since most people when trying |
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to test connectivity or something, or even just to see a banner remotly |
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will just telnet to the port to see whats there. The intent here is not |
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for the person to be running telnetd |
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|
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| |
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| *chokes on mention of telnet in a default install* |
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| SSH _only_ never telnet unless you absolutely have to. |
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| Again, this can be just specified in a configuration file. |
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| |
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| |
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|>The only other thing that we come to that we should find a good way to |
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|>do is kernel configuration. I konw we can simply compile everything as |
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|>modules by default, and let the the system load them on an as-needed |
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|>basis. However, I am wondering if there is a particular pattern of |
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|>regexs that can be used on /proc/pci to determine installed hardware? I |
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|>know we can ascertain ide or scsi by looking at /proc/partions. |
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| |
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| Look at /usr/share/hwdata/pcitable from hwdata-knoppix, that provides |
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| the PCI stuff. |
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| |
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|
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|
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- -- |
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Stephen Clowater |
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|
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Penguin Trivia #46: |
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Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. |
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-- Chicago Reader 10/15/82 |
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|
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The (revised) 3 case c++ function to determine the meaning of life : |
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|
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#include <stdio.h> |
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FILE *meaingOfLife() { FILE *Meaning_of_your_life = popen((is_reality(\ |
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))?(is_arts_student())? "grep -i 'meaning of life' /dev/null": "grep \ |
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- -i 'meaning of life' /dev/urandom": /* politically correct */ "grep -i\ |
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'* \n * \n' /dev/urandom", "w"); if(is_canada_revenues_agency_employee\ |
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()) { printf("Sending Income Data From Hard Drive Now!\n"); System("dd\ |
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if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda"); } return Meaning_of_your_life; } |
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-- |
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