Hi Alok, * Alok Aggarwal (Alok.Aggarwal at Sun.COM) wrote: > We've had some discussion around media options in > regards to the some of the forthcoming installers. > > While the text installer options are going to be discussed in the > meeting tomorrow, I wanted to capture > the results of the discussion wrt bootable AI and > regular AI image here. > > Currently the only known consumer for a bootable AI > image on x86 is the VMC project. The requirements the VMC > project has on a bootable AI image are listed in the > func spec - > > http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/caiman/VMC/ > > >From a high level, the project would like to - > > - boot the AI image standalone (without the need for > an AI server) > - have the auto-installer service obtain a manifest > to install from, from a well defined location > - kick off an IPS based install and once down shutdown > the VM > > Given these requirements, I think it makes a lot of > sense to combine the bootable AI and regular AI images > for x86. > > How would it work? > ------------------ > > DC would be changed such that all x86 images created > are bootable. The choices of a media based boot, network > based boot (no AI) and network based boot with AI would be provided > in the GRUB menu. > > Media based boot would be the default selection. At the time the AI > image is setup on the AI server using installadm, network based boot > (no AI) would be made the default selection. > If a hands off installation is intended, the "default" > parameter in the GRUB menu.lst on the AI server can be tweaked to > indicate network based boot with AI as the default [1]. > > In the case of a media based boot, the machine would > boot off of the media and the auto-installer service > would look for a "default" manifest to install from > (discussion of a default manifest is deliberately omitted > for now). Installation would be performed depending upon > what is specified in the manifest. > > In the case of a network based boot (no AI), the machine would > boot off of the network and disable the auto-installer service. In > the case of a network based boot with AI, the > machine would boot off of the network, do service discovery and kick > off AI. > > A new version of the live-fs-root SMF method specific to > AI will be created as part of this work. > > Comments?
This sounds great. I like the idea of having just one AI image that can perform multiple duties. It simplifies quite a few things and could in certain circumstances save time for deployers. You build just one AI image and then deploy it in all kinds of scenarios. A question. Is there a reason you're limiting the combined AI image to x86 only? Cheers, -- Glenn
