Hi I've just read the AI documentation here
http://dlc.sun.com/osol/docs/content/2009.06/AIinstall/docinfo.html and have some questions/remarks. Note that I only talk about SPARC installations -- I do not have empough experiences with unattended x86 installation so I can not comment on this. All sentences marked with a leading ">>" are copied from the AI documentation. >>Note - You can set up an x86 install server to install to x86 clients and to SPARC clients. Or, you can use a SPARC install server to install >>to x86 clients and to SPARC clients. But, you must first set up an x86 install server, in order to be able to set up a SPARC install server. I really hope that this is only a temporary restriction? >>You must have the OpenSolaris 2009.06 release installed on the system that you plan to use as your install server. Hopefully this is also only a temporary restriction ... If it's really neccessary to have OpenSolaris version x.y..z running on the installation server to install OpenSolairs x.y..z on a client this would be very big step backwards! Even if Solaris is required on the installation server it is a big step backwards. I know this behaviour from AIX and it's ugly as can be : To install a new release of AIX from an existing AIX installation server you must first upgrade the AIX installation server with that new to release. The existing jumpstart installation methods are a lot more flexible and I do not even have to run Solaris on my installation server. In fact, we use our AIX installation server also as installation server for the Solaris machines and it works very well. >>You need a DHCP server in order to set up automated installations. Again I hope this is only temporary. restriction. DCHP server are not used in a lot of production envrionments so it shouldn't be a requirement for Soalris installations. What about wanboot support? Does AI support "real" wanboot installation like they are now supported with jumpstart? There's the sentence >>If you plan to perform automated installations on SPARC client systems, those systems must support WAN boot. but that's all ... In the FAQ it says: >>2. Does my SPARC Client Support WAN boot? >> >>The automated installer requires WAN boot support for SPARC clients. You can check whether your client open boot prompt supports WAN boot by >> checking whether network-boot-arguments is a valid variable that can be set in the eeprom. If the variable network-boot-arguments is displayed, or if it >> returns the output network-boot-arguments: data not available, the open boot prompt supports WAN boot installations. >> >># eeprom | grep network-boot-arguments >>network-boot-arguments: data not available In the existing installation methods wanboot can also be used to install machines without wanboot support in the OBP using boot disk|cdrom -F wanboot .-o prompt (or something similar -- I do not have the right syntax handy) This should also be supported by the new installer, I hope And what about begin scripts and finish scripts? I do not find anything about these or something similar in the documentation. An automated installation without something like begin or finish scripts is more or less useless for unattended installations. Next point: What about flashimage installations? Adding support for flashimages was one of the best enhancements to the existing jumpstart installation. Will they be supported by AI? I also did not find any information about how to install the existing Solaris releases with the new installer. WIth the current jumpstart method I can install every Solaris Release from Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 10 with one installation server. Or do you expect that we have to maintain two installation server for Solaris if the installation of old Solaris releases is necessary? To summarize: The whole design of AI as described in that document looks like it was done from someone who lives in a perfect OpenSolaris world where always only the newest OpenSolaris version is used. But : That is obviously not the real world. And, as far as I can see today, the architects of this solutions totaly ignored backwards compability -- one of the big advantages of Solaris until today. Ah, just see it in the FAQ: >>13. Is the Automated Installer Backwards Compatible? >> >> No, arg..... regards Bernd -- Bernd Schemmer, Frankfurt am Main, Germany http://bnsmb.de/ M s temprano que tarde el mundo cambiar . Fidel Castro
