> Another option: Have you tried using the Automated Installer > to install OpenSolaris without X, Gnome, etc.?
In regards to using or not using the automated installer, keep in mind that some network administrators are VERY much against allowing anyone besides themselves to deploy a DHCP server anywhere on their network for security reasons (i.e. they won't let me do it, and just because me wanting to do it has something to do with this new unproven "OpenSolaris" thing that people are skeptical about doesn't justify it either). This "NO UNAUTHORIZED DHCP SERVERS ON THE NETWORK!" security policy many network admins have is something important to keep in mind as a lot of Sun's customers are very security focused and this is one of the main things that has been keeping me from using automated OpenSolaris installs in production. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (which is what a lot of my customers use) is immune to this "NO DHCP SERVERS" rule because the automated RHEL "kickstart" installs don't require a DHCP server, all it requires is that the Red Hat Anaconda installer can read the kickstart f ile from "somewhere" and that "somewhere" could be on a USB thumbdrive, on a custom made CD / DVD image, on a server somewhere on the network, etc. (anybody who has worked as an RHEL sysadmin and knows how kickstart works knows what I'm talking about). I think the lack of a supported server distro is overall a big issue (maybe the biggest issue) because it prevents Sun from getting server revenue from OpenSolaris that would bring lots of money in from paying customers like me that could be used to fund more projects, hire more people to work on the code, and thus make OpenSolaris even better than it already is. I'm a compulsive risk taker, so I can guarantee that I would definitely have already been using OpenSolaris in production somewhere back in the 2008.05 days and I would have definitely bought support for it IF it could be installed as a minimal server OS (like Nexenta Core) and supported the applications that we use (i.e. postfix, oracle, etc.). Right now, I haven't bought any support from Sun for OpenSolaris, and that's because all of my clients are using RHEL and Ubuntu Server and sending their support fee money over to those companies. Right now OpenSolaris Indiana is stuck between a rock and a hard place. In it's current configuration it caters very heavily to desktop users, but desktop users won't use it (they'll use Ubuntu or Mac OS X) because desktop users want to do things like put music on their ipod with itunes or watch movies with VLC media player (things that are almost impossible to do on OpenSolaris unless you have genius level VLC player compiling capabilities like kronox from lifewithsolaris.jp has). What about using OpenSolaris 2009.06 for a large organization's primary mail server? Let's see, do I need Firefox on my mail server? Nope. Do I need X-windows? Nope. Do I need Gnome games on my server? Nope. Well, what do I need on my mail server for a 1000 person plus organization? I need postfix, and dovecot and squirrelmail. But guess what? There's no official posfix package available from Sun even though the opensolaris.org mailing list runs on Postfix!!! Postfix is available from Blastwave, but we want to buy support from Sun for our company's mail server that handles the company's important e-mails, so yeah, we would like to be able to pay for the right to open a trouble ticket with Sun if we have problems with Postfix on Solaris.... So I guess if I want to deploy a Postfix server for a large business (something I do at least a dozen times a year) and I want to have paid-for support, I'm pretty much forced to use Ubuntu Server or RHEL or Suse then aren't I? People like me in the OpenSolaris community who work as RHCE Linux consultants for a living want to help Sun out and send revenue from some yearly support contract fees over to Sun, but Sun makes it almost impossible for us to do this, so I'm stuck using the same "if it ain't broke why fix it" Linux-based business model that I've been living off of for the last 4 years :-( -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zones-discuss mailing list zones-discuss@opensolaris.org
