Alok Aggarwal wrote: > Currently the Caiman architecture supports two types > of installers - a LiveCD based GUI and AI. Each of these installation > environments are different in that > one is a desktop based environment while the other is > not. As a result, they are both built on a different > set of packages with AI being built on a significantly > smaller set. > > As we provide more installation environments in the future > (text based interactive install, a media based AI and possibly a > network based text install), I think there are a couple of high order > issues that need to be sorted out.
Another high order issue that you didn't list is the user experience. - Do we include different installers in the same media? Or do we have a media for each installer type? Or only include a few installers on the same media? > > a) What kind of an image should these new installers > (text, media based AI) be based on? Since both these > installers are not going to offer a desktop installation > environment, does it make sense to base them on the > same set of packages as AI? I think it would be a > reasonable starting point. For installers that does not require the desktop, the set of packages used for building the AI image sounds like a reasonable starting point. > > b) Assuming some of these installers get delivered as > part of the same AI image, how should the selection > between which installer to use be made? The two obvious > choices are to provide them via the GRUB menu or as a > separate menu item that comes up as part of boot (kind of > like the keyboard and language selection menu in the > current LiveCD installer). I think one of the underlying > requirement here is to allow this to be scriptable. Also, Can you expand on what needs to be scriptable? > a consistent user experience on both sparc and x86 would > be nice. A separate menu items seems better on both counts. > > c) AI and the LiveCD currently share the implementation > for the live-fs-root SMF method and it has been pointed > out that that's not very maintainable. The addition > of more installers to the mix, I think just exacerbates > the problems. It seems appropriate to restructure > live-fs-root as part of the media based AI and text install > work. Or, can be done as part of a bug fix? For example - > > http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=9549 I think we should completely restructure the live-fs-root SMF method. Thanks, --Karen > > What do people think about some of these issues? > > Thanks, > Alok > _______________________________________________ > caiman-discuss mailing list > caiman-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/caiman-discuss
