From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 19 03:24:37 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92FB716A4B3 for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2003 03:24:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dryctnath.mmu.ac.uk (dryctnath.mmu.ac.uk [149.170.190.134]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0706443FD7 for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2003 03:24:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from p.robinson@mmu.ac.uk) Received: from agena.mmu.ac.uk ([149.170.168.195]) by dryctnath.mmu.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #2) id 1A0IRA-0007NR-00; Fri, 19 Sep 2003 11:24:28 +0100 Received: from MMU-HSS-AGENA/SpoolDir by agena.mmu.ac.uk (Mercury 1.48); 19 Sep 03 11:24:28 +0100 Received: from SpoolDir by MMU-HSS-AGENA (Mercury 1.48); 19 Sep 03 11:24:26 +0100 Received: from PRGMMITER (149.170.101.200) by agena.mmu.ac.uk (Mercury 1.48) with ESMTP; 19 Sep 03 11:24:19 +0100 From: "Paul Robinson" To: "'Terry Lambert'" , "'Johnson David'" Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 11:24:19 +0100 Message-ID: <001301c37e98$2f841560$6c01a8c0@MITERDOMAIN> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2627 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <3F698080.474EB847@mindspring.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org cc: 'Vulpes Velox' Subject: RE: Sorry. X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 10:24:37 -0000 Terry Lambert wrote: > I also think that this is 100% incompatible with installs onto > headless boxes with serial consoles, and that you can't really > reconcile the two approaches in the same distribution without > multiple installation disc's. This means regular CD's and not > a DVD, or it means a seperate distribution from the WC CDROM > one. That's funny. Sun are able to do headless installs over an entire server room, AND have a graphical installer when you're sat in front of the box, and they don't need to have separate distribution CDs. It must be magic! :-) > This is also not reconcilable with minimal installs, which do > not have the ability to run a big graphical app. Yup. Several months ago, my interest in installers piqued. I am now obsessed with them, because it also requires an understanding of upgrade processes, patching, the whole shebang. It's one of the few things the BSDs don't actually do particularly well - it works, but not brilliantly. Those who seek "a graphical installer" miss the point by miles. I now have hundreds of notes on this that I'm going to assemble into some sort of mini-paper and then a high-level functional design for the "perfect" installer. Then a roadmap for development, and then hopefully some devs who have more current experience of the scary coding required will get an interest. I know I've been saying this for months now, but really, you can expect to see something on that soon. I actually really like some aspects of the DragonFly plan. It has lots of faults, but it has that kind of weird Unixy feel by using existing tools combined in an interesting way. They plan to write the installer code in ultra-easy-to-change PHP4, serve it via Apache for remote network installs, and on the local console you just use links -g with your graphics guys just needing to edit HTML and GIFs. You then have an easily customisable, brandable installation system. It doesn't address the package management issues they want to, and I can see security problems from miles away, but it's innovative. It's certainly not something I've seen discussed elsewhere. Anyway, this is about to bikeshed. We can all see it. So let's stop now for a little bit. I promise within a month a mailing list away from here where you can rip this to shreds and bikeshed as much as you want. :-) -- Paul Robinson