--- Pixel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> James Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > This may well be too much work at this point, but it would be
> > very nice if the Mandrake installer followed the example of the
> > Solaris 8 installer and got all the configuration possible out
> > of the way beforehand.
>
> pbs:
>
> - at least partitioning must be done before otherwise swap is not
> there.
> - timezones are taken from glibc package (would need copying like
> redhat is doing otherwise)
> - printers list are taken from rhs-printfilters / cups (would need
> copying)
> - mkbootdisk must be interactive
> - X configuration testing interactivaty needs X installed, and test
> can freeze the box, so must be done at the very end of install.
> - a lot of stuff modify files that are not installed yet (like
> draknet)
>
> - to sum up, it would need a lot of change... but i agree this is an
> idea worth thinking :)
>
> Of course, there must be other pbs that i missed.
I never said it was easy... giving a bit of thought to things, it looks
a lot like a huge mess to get right. Either all of the configuration
should be moved up front of package installation, like solaris, and
then cached, to be applied after/as the packages are installed, roughly
as Solaris does it, or nearly all the configuration should be moved to
happen on the first boot, after the packages are installed and the
machine successfully booted, the way that Windows does it.
I think that the latter approach is probably cleaner for the typical
end-user, but both present problems that I suspect are equally sticky
to fix. The Solaris approach keeps the 'duplicate install' floppy
process clean (perhaps even a little cleaner), but it means that the
installer has to cache a lot of state until after the files that need
changing are installed. The Windows approach holds off untill the
system is already mostly-sane, which ensures that the changes made are
done in real-time, based on up-to-date information. This appears to me
to break the 'duplicate install' floppy as it stands, probably
requiring support for changing all of the available options in the
install process anyway, and creating a command to make the 'duplicate
install' disc.
There is a new solaris install process in version 8 that might be more
helpfull. It partitions the disk, sets up some swap, and then
bootstraps in a mini-OS. On reboot a second-stage installer comes up,
where you select packages, and do all remaining configuration. This is
also roughly what I remember Debian doing. I don't particularly like
it as Solaris does it, but that may have a lot to do with my only doing
installs on headless servers and three-generation old workstations with
1x CDROMS, but in the long run this is probably the cleanest approach.
There is probably a quick-fix available here, though. The main
manefestation of my concern is that installing packages typically takes
me an hour or more, even with a fast CD-ROM, or copying them from a
spare hard disk, and things like configuring X and installer bugs can
screw the whole thing after its finished. Moving lilo/grub config in
front of package selection, and executing it as soon as the packages
are installed might be a good compromise. Another option would be to
write a flag to disk to track the state of the install, then, if the
installer notices the flag, it can offer the option of resuming
instalation where it left off (I think Windows does something like
this).
James Mitchell
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