[I seem to have missed this thread until now....] On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Matt Lawrence <[email protected]> wrote: > On the the issue. I have finally gotten access to the kickstart files > that are used to install most of the systems. The one I am looking at > right now is 1648 lines long, with about 1600 of them in the %post clause. > I am of the opinion this is a bad idea, a kickstart shouldn't do much more > than get a system up, running and able to talk to a configuration > management system. Naturally, there is no configuration management system > and systems are left as initially installed for years.
ZOINKS! Correct, kickstart puts bits on disk and that's about it, %post is for tweakage to make first boot successful and kick off at boot what you really need to happen. It's not JumpStart, or any of the other Solaris install options, which is what it appears this kickstart setup is emulating. There are some fundamental differences between the two and one would be wise to play to the various strengths of each system. Searching around the Red Hat docs (possibly the anaconda README and anaconda list as well) should reveal several dire warnings about things not to do in %post (like patch), mainly because you're only merely chroot'ed into the installed environment. You're still running under a kernel that's very different than the boot kernel and in a device environment that may be very different from what you will see at first boot. Minimally, %post should write the bulk of that 1600 lines into a script to do the config you need and trigger that script to be run at boot. For the pragmatic future, once things are out of %post and running under a real system it becomes easier to to break that 1600 lines into a number of smaller, independent, and single purpose scripts that are easier to tune and SCM-ifty. After than it's not a large leap to importing those smaller scripts into a configuration management system snippets. That seem like a nice, sane way to kind of bootstrap some better CM tools into your environment. Authoring configs with a nod to the fact that Linux isn't the only UNIX also helps, as does proper and honest monitoring :) For the selling of your vision outward and upward future, I think starting with some of concepts in the LISA '04 paper by Paul Anderson and Alva Couch [1] might be useful as a place to start. I also suggest looking at the business and see what people in the business are having problems and are experiencing pain and addressing those issues first, even if that's not the most efficient method overall. The goal shouldn't be to prove the other guy wrong or have things your way but to make the business run better. Frankly and 100% IMHO, doing an end-run around entrenched culture rarely works, and even more rarely works well for the runner. Biting your tongue to work your way in/up and attacking from the inside at opportunistic moments, or playing a very Machiavellian game between people and politics seem to be your only options. If neither of those suit you or your personality I suggest keeping your nose clean and looking for other work. -n 1 - http://www.usenix.org/event/lisa04/tech/talks/couch.htm -- ------------------------------------------- nathan hruby <[email protected]> metaphysically wrinkle-free ------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
