Alok Aggarwal wrote: > > On Thu, 25 Jun 2009, Dave Miner wrote: > >>> So, how does it work when I want to script the menu.lst >>> such that the machine does AI once and then just does, say, >>> a network boot (if that's what the boot order has set) >>> thereafter? >>> >> >> It's more usual to selectt network boot as a one-time, not >> persistently in the BIOS or OBP. If you need to do the latter for >> some reason, then it's not going to work, but since most reasonable >> BIOS versions allow the former easily (and OBP always has), providing >> an optimal solution for that case seems wise. > > OBP isn't much of a problem because - > > a) AI would only be invoked by the user explicitly > specifying "boot net:dhcp - install" on the command > line > b) The OS can dictate that the machine boot from disk > after an initial AI. > > So, even if the user has "boot net" set in the OBP, AI > isn't going to get invoked accidentally and reinstall > the installed system. > > BIOS is more of a problem because the OS cannot dictate > the boot order. I agree that network boot won't be selected as the > default in 90% of the cases, but it > would be selected in 10% of the cases for diagnostic > purposes. > > And, for those 10% cases AI shouldn't be automatically > invoked. The proposed solution does make it harder for > the majority but it also protects the minority. > > I'm sorry if I'm being dense here but I just don't see > how scripting menu.lst makes it easy for the majority > and safe for the minority at the same time. Could you > please elaborate? >
My thought was that you can certainly create the default configuration as requiring input, if that satisfies some identified need for safety. But if Peter or William wants to live dangerously and have a network boot go hands-free to installation, then I see no reason to make that excessively difficult, which is where I think requiring expect falls; writing an expect script that works across multiple releases with different names and so on seems challenging, at least. Dave
