retitle 682796 incomplete fai-cd documentation / needless mirror
severity 682796 minor
tags 682796 - patch
thanks
Hi Thomas,
On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 09:12:10PM +0100, Thomas Lange wrote:
> >>>>> On Thu, 15 Nov 2012 20:52:06 +0100, "Andreas B. Mundt"
> >>>>> <andi.mu...@web.de> said:
>
> > I suggest something like the following:
>
> > * Provide an option in fai-cd to not use a CD mirror at all.
> > * If the mirror exists, use it for the installation and fcopy the
> > sources list later.
>
> > What do you think? I would volunteer to provide a patch for that
> > scenario if you are interested, but maybe I am not aware of all
> > problems that might pop up.
> I do not like to have a special function inside the FAI CD. The FAI CD
> should use the config space to do whatever is defined there. If you
> need a special function, use the config space for that, but do not
> expect the FAI code to handle such special cases.
>
> FAI is the general, flexible tool. Your own config space is for your
> local special needs. I therefore like to close the bug.
OK, that's fine. However, the documentation should be updated in that
case in my opinion.
It should be clear, that the mirror on the CD is only used when no
other APT sources are available in the config space in files/etc/apt/.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks as currently a sources.list in
files/etc/apt/ will be used, even if it is not fcopied to the target
in a config space script later. Usually, the use of a file in files/
needs to be explicitly fcopied (and this happens in a later task).
The exception here might confuse users (at least it confused me).
If the sources.list is provided, the mirror on the CD is ignored.
However, it has to be available when creating the CD (fai-cd man page:
-m is mandatory). If an empty directory is used in
fai-cd -m $EMPTYDIR fai-cd.iso
an error is reported: "No mirror found in $EMPTYDIR. Empty directory."
So I have to prepare a (dummy) repository which will never be used.
Perhaps it's possible to make this error a warning like "No mirror
will be available on the CD; an accessible package repository needs to
be defined in the config space and available during installation."
In addition, allow for missing (or empty) repositories.
So to sum up: I see two shortcomings that should be addressed in code
modifications and/or documentation:
1) The cases when a mirror on the CD is going to be used is not
documented. The user expects that the mirror is used in any
case, because its provision when creating the CD is mandatory.
2) A mirror is needed to prepare a FAI CD even if it will never be
used.
Best regards,
Andi
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