Glenn Lagasse wrote: > Hey Keith, > > * Keith Mitchell (Keith.Mitchell at Sun.COM) wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I had a conversation with Sanjay a little bit ago. The subject came up >> of how we would provide customization options that fall outside the >> basic "install custom packages A, B and C to the VM" - configuration >> options such as password, network settings, etc. >> >> Do we intend to support post install customizations? Would this be done >> through SMF enhanced profiles, or in some other manner? Or are we just >> going for the options we've discussed so far (package list, VM settings). >> > > That is an awfully good question. My initial response is 'we'll support > whatever the installation engine we use supports'. Which is vague I > realize. This is perhaps another requirement we might have for an AI > client. Right now, I can think of one option (which seem particularly > unattractive to me). The person constructing the images could create a > new package which contains any customizations they want to introduce and > include that in the installation payload. They would of course need to > have some sort of SMF method to actually apply the changes (this is > pretty much what we tell people who want to do scripting type operations > like they are used to in SVR4 land). > > This also depends on how the bootable AI image is designed. For > instance, if the AI image supports cpio transfer, then the deployer > could create a finalizer script to customize the proto area of the AI > image while it's being built to include whatever customizations he > wants. The problem there is that a) requiring people to write their own > finalizer scripts just seems very overweight and b) that's not really a > supportable interface. I do think that we might be able to say 'we'll > use whatever the AI client provides in terms of customizing the > installation payload'. But then we'll need to express that requirement > to the AI client redesign effort. > > Could you post a mail to caiman-discuss to solicit feedback on this > problem and possible solutions people may have? I'd like to hear > people's thoughts on this. > > Thanks! > >
The Enhanced SMF project is also addressing this exact issue. I think until the eSMF project delivers we should just do what we can the way Glenn has described above. I don't think the VMC project should provide a "stop gap" solution to this until eSMF is available, at least not for our initial release. Perhaps we could document that this will be addressed in a later release. As Glenn suggests, I'm cross posting this to caiman-discuss to gather more thoughts... Joe
