On May 10, 2009, at 4:33 PM, Peter Tribble wrote: > On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Eric J. Ray <Eric.Ray at sun.com> wrote: >> >> On May 7, 2009, at 9:12 PM, Mike Gerdts wrote: >> > >>>> The point of this story is that if the Jumpstart installer and >>>> net-install miniroot were Open Source this is something that I >>>> think the >>>> Sysadmin comminity would be interested in working on and >>>> contributing >>>> too b/c it greatly impacts they're daily jobs. It may be a >>>> legacy mess, >>>> but its a legacy mess we're quite invested in. >>> >>> Back when code was first being opened, jumpstart, live upgrade, and >>> patchadd were the areas I was most interested in seeing open. >>> Needless to say I have been disappointed about the way things have >>> gone in this area. Now that it is pretty clear that new >>> innovation in >>> S10 is winding down and S10++ will completely replace these areas, >>> I'm >>> less inclined to focus on these legacy areas. To a certain degree, >>> this means that I have just given up on being able to use >>> OpenSolaris >>> to make Solaris better. Hopefully this isn't repeated in S10++. > > I'm in pretty much the same boat. In my case, though, the > disappointment > is even greater - we've been largely ignored in such fundamental > questions > as what's worth doing, and what the basic requirements are. (The point > being that what we wanted was the existing things made better rather > than > being replaced - even if the replacements were the best thing since > sliced > bread then it would still be better to spend a little effort to fix > and enhance > what was already there, and that would have generated much more > community involvement.) >
"Fixing" Jumpstart wasn't really viable...short of a full rewrite, it just didn't make sense. >>> In order to encourage sysadmins to help make the new technology >>> right >>> before it gets entrenched, I've invited sysadmins to join the caiman >>> (re-)design discussions that are happening now. >>> >>> >>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/sysadmin-discuss/2009-May/002703.html >>> >> >> Thanks, by the way--your contributions are really helpful over there! >> >> Mike's on the right track. The old code simply won't be opened, for a >> variety of reasons, most significantly that it simply doesn't make >> business >> sense to invest resources there. It's time to update the >> technology, and >> fixing the old, in this case, simply didn't make sense. >> >> Please, join in and provide your input, as Mike is doing! > > Even if that input is - don't do this, pick up jumpstart and fix that? > Input? Sure. That said, fixing Jumpstart isn't an option, for a lot of reasons (not the least of which is that it's virtually unmaintainable). > I have a really big worry here. Most shops have a variety of tools, > and > are generally looking to reduce the diversity of tools they support. > Adding > a new tool isn't going to go down well, at all. I can see a thought > process > going along the lines of: "hm, we gotta drop jumpstart, we aren't > allowing > anything new, so all our new boxes get installed with kickstart > because > that works just great for us". > That's a valid point. So, let's step away from Jumpstart for a sec... What business problems do you need to solve, and what does that look like? What does the ideal sysadmin experience look like?
