Joseph J. VLcek wrote: > 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.
In terms of the VM project, customizations and eSMF.. certainly some of the post installation system configuration could be done with this when 'building' the VM image. However, this would require a reboot of the VM and then the capture of the .ovf file, assuming this file contains all of the configuration data upon export? At this point in time we do not have much in the way of configuration specification that is allowed in the AI schema. This can be fixed, but for the first release of the VMC project it isn't likely we will be far enough along on the eSMF support to want to add this. It isn't likely that all of it could be done via eSMF, however. We need to understand what things are configurable in the VM with regard to 'system' configuration, and what the VMC team is wanting to export to the users. thanks, sarah **** > > As Glenn suggests, I'm cross posting this to caiman-discuss to gather > more thoughts... > > Joe > > > > _______________________________________________ > caiman-discuss mailing list > caiman-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/caiman-discuss
