I've recently started to use AI for minimized automated installations,
and after some experimentation on my own (and filing tons of package
dependency bugs discovered in the process) came across the OpenSolaris
Base Profile Metapackages spec (v0.14). Since this is probably of
interest to both the JeOS project and the Caiman and IPS projects, I'm
posting to all three lists. Feel free to cut down if this is
inappropriate.
p.1: distribution that will be made available in the /release and
/support repositotories and exposed for use
^^ dup
p.3: • Increased security in the sense software that is not installed
cannot be easily re-enabled an
^ and
p.4: be supported by OpenSolaris and/or the pkg(5) system. If and
^ an
metapackages may also be delivered to provide users and developers
with well-defined minimum
^ a
Installer and Distro and VM Constructor tools desiring heavily
reduced installations of OpenSolaris,
^ remove
p.6: • Generally applicable ISA-specific support
rather platform-specific?
Some reviewers have expressed concerns about making the following
features part of the required supported base install profile:
• Zones
• Logical Domains (SPARC)
Those clearly don't belong into a base profile: it makes perfect
sense to run a system without local zones, xVM and LDOMs; I cannot
see what's to be gained by *requiring* to install that support.
• Service tagging (is it clear that this feature is a product and
business requirement for the supported base install profile?)
This seems to be a Sun/Oracle business requirement rather than an
OS requirement. This belongs into Oracle support requirements if
desired, not into the base profile.
p.7: metapackage. Playtform-specific base metapackages will specify
^ typo
p.8: SUNWgrub Grand Unified Boot Loader
x86 only
SUNWrmod Realmode Modules (x86 only)
This should either go away or be folded into SUNWcs, cf. CR
6948324.
p.9: SUNWbash GNU Bourne-Again shell (default shell)
SUNWgnu-coreutils GNU core utilities
SUNWgnu-nano Nano editor
Those three are all a matter of personal preference/choice, not a
requirement. Don't get me wrong, I use bash myself, even as root
shell, but there's nothing that makes this a *required* part of a
minimal installation. True, Project Indiana chose to make this
into the default shell, but IMO the base profile should only
provide the bare minimum to have a runnable system, nothing more.
This is not about preferences or choice, but a cannot-do-without
rule (with clear justification) should be the guiding principle
here.
GNU coreutils are even worse since (as we all know) they lack a
couple of Solaris-specific features, so we couldn't run with only
coreutils and without the traditional Sun tools instead.
I've never used SUNWgnu-nano, but /usr/has/bin/vi (rather than vim)
should be enough, probably with a way to use that as /usr/bin/vi.
• SUNWdscp - Domain to Service Processor Communications Protocol (SPARC
only)
This is not SPARC only, but platform-specific. I'd very much
prefer that such packages are only required (if at all) *on the
platform that needs them*, not on all machines of the same ISA.
The dynamic checks in Solaris 10/SX:CE (/usr/sbin/install.d) seem
like a good way to handle this to me.
2.1.6 Drivers
The driver problem is a hard one: I very much prefer to be able to
have an installation with only the drivers needed for the target
machine (at least as an option). On the other hand, determining
this list can be quite hard (and not all drivers show up in prtconf
-D output, as I've recently discovered). Most likely the ddu can
be leveraged to determine that list and provide input for a dynamic
determination of packages to add as above.
Unfortunately, problems with missing drivers can lead to hard to
debug panics, e.g. when the driver for the system disk isn't
available ;-( The panic messages could probably be much more
helpful than they are now, though.
p.11: Products that support OpenSolaris as a deployment platform, should
^ remove
p.12: Additionally, for for foundational, System defined metapackages,
^ dup
p.13: term Just enough OS ("JeOS" and pronounced as "juice") has emerged
to represent the an overall
^ remove
p.16: Red Hat requires that both the Core and Base package groups
areinstalled on supported deployments
^ missing whitespace
6.2.2 Oracle Enterprise Linux
several strange line breaks
p.17: example, developers can benefit to ready access to heavily reduced
^ from?
p.18: know the smallest support OS configuration required to deploy a
^ed
product. The presence of a documented and support minimum
^ed
Overall, I like the proposal: it's an important step towards an urgently
needed addition to AI and should be provided ASAP, even if it needs to
be refined later. Requiring every interested party to reinvent this
wheel is tedious and errorprone.
Thanks.
Rainer
--
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Rainer Orth, Center for Biotechnology, Bielefeld University
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