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Date:      Sat, 6 Nov 2010 00:38:09 -0700
From:      Garrett Cooper <yanegomi@gmail.com>
To:        Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
Cc:        jpaetzel@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, Garrett Cooper <gcooper@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: txt-sysinstall scrapped
Message-ID:  <F0AE2CC1-2837-4A38-88BC-C57289F9C041@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4CD4FA7E.4030602@bsdimp.com>
References:  <201011052316.27839.jpaetzel@freebsd.org>	<AANLkTi=62rRhZsN4wUi6p_yokSxG0tkjUHK7gosLtTRZ@mail.gmail.com>	<20101105.230617.74669306.imp@bsdimp.com> <AANLkTi=G2UEj4P=h=B7Tr58vg7RC9McMZq-q73ArDWOZ@mail.gmail.com> <4CD4FA7E.4030602@bsdimp.com>

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On Nov 5, 2010, at 11:49 PM, Warner Losh wrote:

> On 11/06/2010 00:04, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 10:06 PM, Warner Losh<imp@bsdimp.com>  wrote:
>>>>     Just to add to that (because I do find it a novel idea), 1) how
>>>> are you going to properly prevent man in the middle attacks (SSL, =
TLS,
>>>> etc?), and 2) what webserver would you use?
>>> https or ssh.
>>>=20
>>> We're also toying with the idea of having a partition that you could
>>> 'dd' your certs and keys to (so any system can customize the image
>>> with keys to make sure you were talking to who you think you are).
>>> We'd just reserve 1MB of space on partition s3.  We'd then check to
>>> see if there was a tar ball.  If so, we'd extract it and do the
>>> intelligent thing with the keys we find there.
>> Wouldn't it be better just to go with a read-write media solution
>> (USB) like Matt Dillon was suggesting at today then?
> That's exactly what I'm doing, i think.  I didn't hear matt's =
suggestion at all, so I have no idea what you are talking about.

Summary: DVD load times are ridiculous; just go straight for a fat (4GB =
uncompressed, 1.7GB compressed) USB image. I think it's a bit big, but =
with all of the binary packages in ports, it might be around that size.

> my idea was that you could do this with an image you'd DD to a usb =
stick.  For the cdrom, you'd need to do more complicated things, which I =
hadn't though about earlier...  While I thought of this for vm creation =
mostly, I can see cdrom booting might be desirable too...

Yeah... I boot from CD by default and so do a number of other users of =
course (despite the fact that it's an archaic 1980s technology :)...).

>> Then again,
>> determining the root device to date is still a bit kludgy isn't it?
>>=20
> Not anymore.  ufs labels and glabel make it almost bulletproof.

Good point -- forgot about that. Which reminds me that I need to test =
some geom things related to this.

>>>>     I bring up the former item because I wouldn't want my data =
going
>>>> unencrypted across any wire, and what BSD compatible web servers =
did
>>>> you guys have in store and who would maintain the server, and what
>>>> kinds of vulnerabilities would you be introducing by adding a =
service
>>>> which would be enabled by default at runtime?
>>> The web server would just be there at installation time.  You'd run =
it
>>> out of the ram disk and it would evaporate when the system reboots
>>> after it being installed.
>> Sure.
>>=20
>>> Also, I'm not sure we even need to have to have a set of prompts.  =
If
>>> we do the web page right, we likely can just go directly to lynx...
>> Well... I like the curl idea a lot more for this approach (esp =
because
>> it supports more protocols than just http and ftp, whereas lynx is
>> constrained to ftp and http for the most part), but having both
>> solutions is more heavyweight for the task than it probably should =
be.
> I must be explaining badly.  lynx isn't for downloading anything from =
the web, but connecting to the web-server that's running on your box to =
configure the box before the install happens.  You don't need https for =
that, and while I suppose we could offer the uber-geek ftp install via =
command line extensions to ftpd, I hadn't planned on that :)

Well... what do you mean by "before the install happens"? What kind of =
information would one specify in that state to get the machine from an =
effectively halted state to a singing and dancing I'm installing FreeBSD =
state?

> I have no idea what the curl idea is.  Maybe you could explain to me =
what you are suggesting here.

Summary: push and pull data to and from the backend via curl. There =
wasn't much else to it other than that...

Thanks,
-Garrett=



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