Re: GSoC: Sysinst enhancements proposal

David Laight ([email protected]) @ Mon, 2 Apr 2012 19:12:39 +0100 wrote:
>    For GPT I suspect you'll use a separate GPT partition for each FS.
>    With RAID you get the whole thing over again - do you use a single
>    RAID for the disk, or separate ones for each FS?

Single RAID per disk and multiple FS per RAID (MBR/disklabel or GPT 
schemes possible).

> 4) I spent a lot of time on the retry loops during installation -
> mainly ensuring that they went back 'just' far enough to be useful
> while allowing all the silly mistakes to be corrected without
> restarting.

That's planned.

> 5) The disk partitioning functions would be useful on an installed
>    system. 

I see three ways to do this:
1) Import sysinst into base;
2) Create separate disk management utility and just run it during
   installation process;
3) Write library and use it for sysinst and for new utility.
What way will be selected - is more political issue, I think.

> 6) I'm not sure of the value of trying to have too much in the way of
>    automated installs - if you don't have identical hardware, or
>    aren't doing a very simple 'use all the disk' install they aren't
>    that much use.

Automated install means that user create answers-file to sysinst, write it
to installation media, insert disc (or boot thought PXE) and after 10-15
minutes get installed system. Also answer file may contains directives to
configure network and start ssh with predefined password/key. That may be
useful for machines without keyboard/monitor or in missions of mass
installation (clusters?). If add binary packages installation and more 
post-configure abilities to sysinst we'll got powerful tool.

With best regards,
Eugene