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Greetings and salutations, |
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In GLI's 2.5 years or so of existence, we have achieved almost all of |
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the goals of the project. The first main goal of GLI was to make a |
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fully automated installation program that would work off of profiles, |
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be non-interactive, and architecture-generic. The other main goal was |
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to make an installer that could be used by end users for their |
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desktops without having to know XML and with pretty, easy-to-use |
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frontends that would help boost the reputation of Gentoo as not just a |
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super-l33t distro. |
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|
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We have struggled and faught hard to achieve both goals at the same |
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time, but alas they are simply too different to be able to handle both |
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and do a *good job* at both. |
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The main problem, as was to be expected, is partitioning. Andrew |
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Gaffney has spent ages working on trying to support every insaine and |
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idiotic combination of partitions that users try to create, but there |
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are millions of combinations and the simple truth is we can't do it |
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right for everyone, and we're tired of the endless stream of people |
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complaining why their drive with 6 primaries isn't being supported. |
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Also, with the current partitioning, it is extremely hard to support |
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raid or lvm or other architectures in general for that matter. |
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|
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After seeing the simplicity and ease of Quickstart, the solution |
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became clear: admit failure and split/branch GLI. So here's the plan: |
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|
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Quickstart will become the primary method for automated installations. |
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It is designed to be able to be netbooted and will be the installer |
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integrated into Scire. It may also be added to the minimal livecd at |
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some point (why not, right?). Quickstart works with blank drives |
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only, and is not too user-friendly. Currently no frontend or |
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configurator exists though I have plans for a web-based one that will |
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plug in to Scire nicely. |
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|
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GLI will be refactored to become slightly more interactive. There |
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will probably be about four main steps/stopping points/actions that |
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will occur. |
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1. Setup networking, logfiles, chroot_dir and such.. i.e. all the |
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client_configuration stuff. This already is done interactively from |
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the two main frontends. We can thus chuck the entire client_profile |
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(yea!!!!) |
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2. Drop to cfdisk or diskdruid to let the user do partitioning and |
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probably filesystem formatting too. This lets the user deal with |
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partitioning themselves and thus we don't get the blame when they |
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screw it up! :) |
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3. Define mountpoints.. these will replace the partition layout in the |
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install profile. Then we fetch/install the stage tarball and/or |
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portage. We will still keep the dynamic stage3 (as well as making |
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command-line tools for its use), because the installer-livecd isn't |
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changing. Having this step separate lets us choose profiles and |
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gather updated info about things like USE flags. |
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4. Everything else. There really isn't much benefit to separate out |
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the rest of the steps. We'll let people drop to a shell to make their |
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own kernel config, but I don't see much beyond that and I still like |
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the ability to configure at once and then let it go for a while. |
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|
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These changes will drastically simplify the partitioning code and make |
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GLI much easier to port to other architectures. |
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|
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The plan is to release a version of GLI like it is now with bugfixes |
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only for 2007.0 and target the new GLI (god forbid, should we call it |
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GLI 2.0? <cringe>) for 2007.1. If enough progress has been made, we |
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can try to put an experimental copy on the livecd and hide it (doesn't |
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make much sence to have an entirely different /experimental livecd |
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just for that). The new GLI will be written first and foremost with |
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gli-dialog as the frontend. The GTK frontend is quite bloated and a |
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pain to change and maintain, so it may disappear entirely and that is |
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ok by the installer devs. |
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|
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That's about it, if you have any questions/comments, feel free to post |
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them. This list has like no traffic so it could use some discussion |
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every once and awhile. |
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Have a pleasant day, |
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|
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-Codeman |
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-Installer Project Co-Lead. |
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-- |
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gentoo-installer@g.o mailing list |