Hi Keith, Thanks for the comments. Responses are in-line below. We are also planning to move the wiki material to the external wiki and will send out a link to that as soon as it is available. Thea, Danny, Mark, Ryan
On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 1:05 PM, Keith Mitchell <Keith.Mitchell at sun.com>wrote: > Hi, > > I was planning on asking how this was going. I think the requirements look > good so far. It sounds like you've finalized the decision to use the Ncurses > set-up, programming in C. I added just a couple comments/questions in-line > below. > > Please note, though, that the wiki link you posted is an internal link, and > not available to everyone watching the caiman-discuss mailing list. In the > future, just include a copy in the email. Thanks! > > -Keith > > *Problem Statement*: Provide installation media for OpenSolaris that >> delivers a purely text-based interface for users >> >> >> *Requirements:* >> >> *Primary:* >> >> 1. Installation media will run on x86 architecture >> >> 2. Same options/configuration as GUI installer >> >> 3. Ncurses interface >> >> 4. Provided as option on current CD >> >> /Non-Functional Requirements:/ >> >> 1. Provide proper documentation >> >> 2. Ensure adequate testing is performed >> >> What defines "adequate" testing? In terms of your involvement with this > project, what degree of testing will you be doing? We meant this requirement more as coordination with the QE's and test engineers, but we also plan to do our own testing of our code by trying out our install on different computers, using different options, etc. We will change this on the wiki to clarify. > > >> 3. Make sure that ncurses interface is user-friendly >> >> >> *Secondary:* >> >> 1. Runs on SPARC architecture >> >> 2. Line-by-line interface >> >> 3. Network installation >> >> >> *Use Cases:* >> >> 1. User has SPARC machine and wishes to install OpenSolaris by inserting a >> CD and selecting configuration options through a console. >> >> 2. User has x86 machine and wishes to install OpenSolaris, but does not >> have enough memory to run GNOME. User inserts the text-based install CD. >> >> 3. User has x86 machine but graphics card is not supported by OpenSolaris, >> so they run the text-based installer in order to install OpenSolaris. >> >> 4. User starts install (situations 1-3) and the install runs to completion >> with no problems. At the end the user is given back control of the terminal >> from which they can explore the system or reboot. >> >> What are the reasons for supporting this use case? Or rather, for drawing > attention to it as desired behavior vs. automatically rebooting, for > example? We included this case just to indicate a normal flow of events after the installation starts. It was suggested to us that we give the user the option to cancel out of the automatic reboot, so they can look at the log files and other aspects of the system before the reboot occurs. We will reword this to be a little more clear. > > >> ALT 4: Error occurs during install, user is given log of install and error >> messages, user regains control of terminal for troubleshooting >> >> > > Thea Gab wrote: > >> The interns from Colorado School of Mines have posted information from >> yesterday's meeting and an overview of the text-based installer project at >> http://installzone-wiki.central.sun.com/wiki/index.php/CSMInternResources >> . >> >> Also, after listening to all of the advice and ways to take this project >> from the meeting today we have determined a different approach would >> probably be better. Since we initially did not anticipate how to connect >> Dialog to the installer code, specifically liborchestrator, we feel like >> using this implementation will result in a much more roundabout method in >> order to achieve the goals we're seeking. Specifically: >> >> * Interaction with liborchestrator will require some intermediate steps >> between bash and C which will introduce a new level of complexity on top of >> the project >> * This additional complexity would also leave the system prone to >> breaking more easily than a single self contained C program. >> * We also believe that using this approach would make the text >> installer easier to implement for SPARC systems in the future, because >> Dialog would not need to be added into the repositories. * Further, we >> can reproduce Frank's mock ups to a closer degree. >> * Learning how exactly to tweak Dialog to obtain just the right type of >> interface could take just as long as programming up a near perfect >> representation in ncurses. >> >> >> We now think it would probably be better to just use a straight ncurses >> implementation of the text based installer. >> >> Thea, Danny, Ryan, Mark >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> caiman-discuss mailing list >> caiman-discuss at opensolaris.org >> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/caiman-discuss >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/caiman-discuss/attachments/20090521/2a0707bb/attachment.html>
