On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 15:01 -0400, Mark Haywood wrote: > On 06/ 2/10 01:43 PM, James Carlson wrote: > > James Carlson wrote: > > > >> That's the part that still confuses me. I'd expected that, just as > >> installation was "based on" NWAM in OpenSolaris, this would be the > >> pattern for the future as well. > >> > > And, now, I understand Mark's last reply, where he said: > > > > I and the folks working on install don't believe that NWAM is yet > > functionally complete enough to be the default service for our > > Enterprise customers. And therefore, we chose to provide install with a > > mechanism for configuring an initial physical:default configuration. > > > > OK; that's the missing bit. It *is* intentionally physical:default, not > > just for install, but also (potentially) for the running system. The > > original proposal provided that hint in the XML-encoded profile, but > > never came out and said it directly. > > > > It was a long drive to figure out that this was intentional and not a > > "bug." Could something to the effect of "for AI, and for the time > > being, we're expecting to disable NWAM and use physical:default on the > > installed system" be added to the spec? > > > > It is intentional that the interfaces provided by this case will only > have significance for physical:default. And I think that it is also > correct to say that for AI, more often than not, we expect NWAM to be > disabled. However, an administrator can do whatever she likes in an SMF > profile. If she wishes to enable NWAM *and* define the static > configuration, then we can't prevent that. We can, however, display a > message that indicates that she just did something that was probably > nonsensical. We can also document the network/install service to make it > clear that the properties are used to configure static configurations > for physical:default only.
I think the idea that NWAM is typically *not* enabled by default with AI is unfortunate. Many sites may choose to deploy AI in environments where the network infrastructure (dhcp) provides correct and reasonable configuration even for systems that have more or less "fixed" IP configuration. As such, NWAM offers an easier configuration for end-users. I view network/physical:default as an unfortunate artifact, representing a deficiency in nwam, that I had hoped would one day be corrected. Having two totally different and totally incompatible network configuration schemes is a recipe for much end-user confusion and many service calls. - Garrett > > The spec can be updated to make this clear. > > > _______________________________________________ > opensolaris-arc mailing list > [email protected] _______________________________________________ opensolaris-arc mailing list [email protected]
