On Mon, 26 Aug 2002 10:39:24 MST Craig wrote:

> Hi folks,
> I used to use Coyote Linux (http://www.coyotelinux.com) which started as
> a LRP. One of the things that I thought was pretty cool, certainly for
> beginners, is the script installation file that guides you through
> creating your disk. It simply prompts you with maybe 10-12 questions and
> then creates your firewall on your floppy based on your replies. I don't
> know if something like that could be done with Bering, but if it could I
> think that would be pretty useful. Just my 2 cents.

For the last Bering images I created, I wrote a shell script image
modification utility that sounds similar to what you describe.
Unfortunately, I needed to write it quickly and haven't been able
to make it as generally useful as I would like yet.

My goal was to make it possible for moderately experienced Bering
users (me initially and hopefully others as the code is refined)
to start with a base LEAF image and quickly modify it to build a
custom install image.  Some of the thing the prototype does, mostly
in a very limited fashion, are

  - download (and cache) additional packages that are not part
    of the stock image (e.g. libz, sshd, ntpclnt, latest shorewall)
  - download modules (e.g. 3c509.o) for the target host
  - adjust syslinux.cfg to add packages, serial console, and
    multiple disk support
  - adjust individual packages to do things like:
      - change the root password
      - change the hostname
      - set lrp.conf and POSIXness.conf variables like those for
        the smtp relay 
      - add entries to /etc/crontab
      - add modules to /etc/modules
      - generate and install ssh host keys
      - install a pre-defined /root/.ssh/authorized_keys file
      - fix errors that have been identified, but are not yet
        corrected in the latest release (e.g. the savelog
        ownership/permissions issues root exclude of
        /var/lib/shorewall in Bering)
      - add features like mailing logs from the log rotate
        functions run from cron
      - append shorewall file snippets from a shorewall config
        directory into the base /etc/shorewall/  files
  - create a UML file system based on the image and a start
    script to test the image using a user-mode linux kernel

With a flexible, pluggable code base that is written in a
language supported on (at least) Win32 and Linux, it should be
possible to support my goals as well as interactive frontends
...text, graphical, web, fwbuilder, whatever.  (This might even
be something that could be built with/around Ant[1].)

I have some thoughts about how such a code library might be
written and even more questions than ideas.  I will try to
collect both in an orderly fashion over the next few days and
post them in a separate thread.  For those interested, I will
probably make that post to the leaf-devel list.

--Brad

[1] http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/



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