On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 11:07 PM, Anon Y Mous<no-re...@opensolaris.org> wrote: >> One thing I've found to be true though: either a machine is all zoned, or >> not. >> It gets horribly confusing to have real activity in the global zone, >> where you can half see the non-global zones, so if you have zones >> on a machine then it's easier to run nothing in the global zone and >> just use it as an administrative container. > > Since you brought it up. I think what we really need is an officially > supported OpenSolaris Indiana 2009.xx SERVER distribution from Sun > Microsystems that can be downloaded from genunix.org and does what you just > described: i.e. it installs itself with no X-windows and just runs as a > command line only minimal "administrative container" for zones with no GNOME > desktop, no Thunderbird mail reader, no GNOME games, etc. etc.
There is humorous irony here, given how much 'flak' Sun took over the years for its outdated GUI - until Solaris adopted Gnome. Now that [Open}Solaris have a modern UI, you want to get rid of it... ;-) Seriously, it would be helpful for Sun to understand the advantages of a release that doesn't have a GUI as an option. In other words, what problems are caused by the existence of the GUI software (besides wasted disk space)? Instead of a separate distro, perhaps it would be simpler for everybody if there was a "no-GUI server" installation option that simply doesn't install the GUI tools. Would that meet your needs? Another option: Have you tried using the Automated Installer to install OpenSolaris without X, Gnome, etc.? > A lot of my paying clients are big time Linux users, they pay $$$$ for RHEL > and for the long term supported versions of Ubuntu Server, etc. and they have > been wanting to try migrating some server instances over to OpenSolaris > Indiana within the last six months or so to gain benefits from zones and ZFS, > they like OpenSolaris Indiana for the most part, but they've been very turned > off by the fact that OpenSolaris Indiana forces them to have all this desktop > software installed when what they really want is a minimal server OS (similar > to Ubuntu's "Ubuntu Server" distribution that comes without a GNOME desktop) > and they also didn't like the fact that I wasn't able to deploy any new zones > for a while when the IPS repository went down a while ago. I believe that you can now create a local repository. This might help: http://wikis.sun.com/display/IpsBestPractices/Setting+Up+and+Maintaining+Package+Repositories ("Setting Up and Maintaining Package Repositories"). -- --JeffV _______________________________________________ zones-discuss mailing list zones-discuss@opensolaris.org
