> 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?
Thanks for the quick response Jeff! We also already did have a discussion about having a minimal server installation option for Cayman / Indiana here: http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=107921&tstart=15 and Alan Coopersmith said they had some problems getting IPS and the Cayman installer to inter-operate with each other to allow you to choose which packages you wanted in time for the 2009.06 release, which was why I suggested it might be easier to just create a minimalized "server only" distro for Indiana like Ubuntu did for Ubuntu Server than to fix whatever it is that's going on with IPS that prevents it from letting you choose what packages to install. IMO it doesn't matter that much whether Sun goes with the "Red Hat" approach of having one really big installation DVD / CD set that has a lot of packages on it and lets you choose what packages you want to install or whether Sun goes with the "Canonical / Ubuntu" approach of having an entirely separate "server only" installation CD that doesn't have any X-windows packages on it. Sun should just go with whatever method is easiest for them to implement so that they can get a decent OpenSolaris Indiana server configuration out to the public as quickly as possible so that Indiana can get a foot hold in the data center vis-a-vis RHEL and start to become a source of immediate revenue for Sun in terms of server support contracts. I will say though that in my opinion the Ubuntu Server method has a very slight advantage over Red Hat in that their "Ubuntu Server" distro is a little faster to download and install than RHEL is and it's faster and easier to configure and set up as well b ecause it focuses on just doing one thing and doing that one thing well and doesn't try too hard to be all things to all people. Another important thing to keep in mind is that many server users would like to have "virtual consoles" configured by default on the server instead of X-windows so that they can switch between different command line consoles. As I understand it, X-windows doesn't work properly if you have the virtual consoles enabled on OpenSolaris (see links below): http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=96463&tstart=0 http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=82794&tstart=0 so if we have to choose between either having X-windows OR virtual consoles, why not have a server only install that removes GNOME and X-windows and instead immediately gives you a working virtual consoles implementation during the first reboot right after the install is finished. A specialized server installation would have an advantage in that virtual consoles would "just work" and the sysadmin wouldn't have to waste his precious time using SMF to tweak the configuration files and svcadm enable each virtual console one at a time. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zones-discuss mailing list zones-discuss@opensolaris.org
