OK, I have some pretty deep admin experience, so I'll chime in. :) My favorite uses of finish scripts (in no particular order):
- JASS/security stuff - OK, I'm not talking about just installing a package, but installing a package and configuration with some logic inside. In my case, we installed JASS with a custom "driver", and ran a harden as a post-install task. When the system booted, it would run a JASS verify/audit type thing to make sure that everything was cool before going into multi-user. Doing this as in installation task removed the risk of having an un-hardened or un-verified machine on the network. This example fits lots of other examples of "stuff to be installed and configured before the machine goes "live". - Third party crap - we can't rely on ISVs and partners to delivery properly packaged and integrated release bundles of any kind. Sometimes a tarball or zip is all you get. Post-installation scripts allow you to extract, install, and configure stuff hands off. - Third party crap that is way down deep in the weeds - filesystems, clustering stuff, management and monitoring tools, etc.. Sometimes several reboots and juggling of RCs and services are required. Maybe even a BIOS flash or specific drivers, or other crazy things that can only be done after the platform is well known and device/software trees are established. Repeatable and "hands off" are the key drivers for me. We can control our stacks and our releases, but the third party and ISV worlds will likely never come 100% into that mindset. bill. Casper.Dik at Sun.COM wrote: > >> No, at this time those do not exist. That's deliberate. In many (most) >> cases, >> Jumpstart finish scripts exist to work around gaps in the feature set or >> implementation. We want to understand what the real requirements are >> and build those into the product. > > Don't try that; after reading a large part of the AI opensolaris > autoinstallation documentation I can only conclude that people have read > the jumpstart installation but they have no idea how jumpstart is used in > practice. > > > First of all, everyone who uses jumpstart in a large environment doesn't > actually need to do anything when a new client is installed. > > Secondly, in a past live, I used the begin/finish script to customize > *everything* in a system. > > This includes: > > - installing something other than Solaris (SunOS 4.x) > - later it was used to install Linux also > - any possible other mechanism you can come up with. > > Not having a finish script will leave you with a gap; by trying to > "understand the real requirement" you're not even close to discovering why > Jumpstart is fantastic. > > We needed to wait until Solaris 2.2 came out (or some unofficial patch > from Sun for Solaris 2.1) but from that point it sliced and diced. > > Understand that many people who use Jumpstart hardly ever run > "add_install_client" or any of the other scripts. > > Before you want to improve on jumpstart you must REALLY understand > jumpstart; that, unfortunately, requires sysadmin experience at a large > customer. > > Casper >
