[arch-general] Arch Linux automatic (prescripted) installer/deployment tool
Hi all, I've started working on a new procedure for AIF called 'automatic'. With automatic I don't mean a newbfriendly installer that automatically configures your xorg etc. I rather mean an installer that you pass a small configfile (disk layout, package list,...) so it can work non-interactively to setup your system exacty the way you want. I hope I/we can someday implement such automatic installation in two ways: - an environment that gets loaded through by pxe booting and can work without any user input at all. Best case scenario we can generate such an environment like we generate cd iso's, and we automatically start aif with the automatic procedure. A sufficient live network config will be done (the bios will use dhcp before pxe booting) and the config file for the procedure can be made available for example by the user himself who generated the pxe environment. (low prio for me personally but maybe someone is interested in this, it's something to keep in mind) - we use the installer cd with AIF on it, you boot it and start "aif -p automatic" yourself. 2 more manual things need to happen: * Network config (for that I plan to write a simple script that uses the aif libraries) * getting the config file for the automatic procedure After that, the automatic procedure can work independently. Given the modular, reusable code base we already have now, this should be fairly easy to implement (although I still need to work more on aif, the way pacman functions are exposed etc) Does anyone have thoughts, ideas, requirements, ...? Dieter
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 2:17 PM, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter@plaetinck.be> wrote:
Hi all, I've started working on a new procedure for AIF called 'automatic'. With automatic I don't mean a newbfriendly installer that automatically configures your xorg etc. I rather mean an installer that you pass a small configfile (disk layout, package list,...) so it can work non-interactively to setup your system exacty the way you want.
I hope I/we can someday implement such automatic installation in two ways: - an environment that gets loaded through by pxe booting and can work without any user input at all. Best case scenario we can generate such an environment like we generate cd iso's, and we automatically start aif with the automatic procedure. A sufficient live network config will be done (the bios will use dhcp before pxe booting) and the config file for the procedure can be made available for example by the user himself who generated the pxe environment. (low prio for me personally but maybe someone is interested in this, it's something to keep in mind) - we use the installer cd with AIF on it, you boot it and start "aif -p automatic" yourself. 2 more manual things need to happen: * Network config (for that I plan to write a simple script that uses the aif libraries) * getting the config file for the automatic procedure After that, the automatic procedure can work independently.
Given the modular, reusable code base we already have now, this should be fairly easy to implement (although I still need to work more on aif, the way pacman functions are exposed etc)
Does anyone have thoughts, ideas, requirements, ...?
Decent network config capability that includes wireless would be very useful. Also, this seems very close to quickinst, if you haven't looked at that.
Aaron Griffin wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 2:17 PM, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter@plaetinck.be> wrote:
Hi all, I've started working on a new procedure for AIF called 'automatic'. With automatic I don't mean a newbfriendly installer that automatically configures your xorg etc. I rather mean an installer that you pass a small configfile (disk layout, package list,...) so it can work non-interactively to setup your system exacty the way you want.
I hope I/we can someday implement such automatic installation in two ways: - an environment that gets loaded through by pxe booting and can work without any user input at all. Best case scenario we can generate such an environment like we generate cd iso's, and we automatically start aif with the automatic procedure. A sufficient live network config will be done (the bios will use dhcp before pxe booting) and the config file for the procedure can be made available for example by the user himself who generated the pxe environment. (low prio for me personally but maybe someone is interested in this, it's something to keep in mind) - we use the installer cd with AIF on it, you boot it and start "aif -p automatic" yourself. 2 more manual things need to happen: * Network config (for that I plan to write a simple script that uses the aif libraries) * getting the config file for the automatic procedure After that, the automatic procedure can work independently.
Given the modular, reusable code base we already have now, this should be fairly easy to implement (although I still need to work more on aif, the way pacman functions are exposed etc)
Does anyone have thoughts, ideas, requirements, ...?
Decent network config capability that includes wireless would be very useful. Also, this seems very close to quickinst, if you haven't looked at that.
AFAIK Quickinst is quite different: it _doesn't_do several things (which are assumed to be done manually) such as configuring partitions, filesystems, mounting them etc. And quickinst aim is to install a "common defaults" setup with just the base packages, with sane defaults etc. The goal of my deployment tool is automate everything as much as possible, while being tightly controlled (package list, specific configurations etc) Dieter
Dieter Plaetinck wrote:
Hi all, I've started working on a new procedure for AIF called 'automatic'. With automatic I don't mean a newbfriendly installer that automatically configures your xorg etc. I rather mean an installer that you pass a small configfile (disk layout, package list,...) so it can work non-interactively to setup your system exacty the way you want.
I hope I/we can someday implement such automatic installation in two ways: - an environment that gets loaded through by pxe booting and can work without any user input at all. Best case scenario we can generate such an environment like we generate cd iso's, and we automatically start aif with the automatic procedure. A sufficient live network config will be done (the bios will use dhcp before pxe booting) and the config file for the procedure can be made available for example by the user himself who generated the pxe environment. (low prio for me personally but maybe someone is interested in this, it's something to keep in mind) - we use the installer cd with AIF on it, you boot it and start "aif -p automatic" yourself. 2 more manual things need to happen: * Network config (for that I plan to write a simple script that uses the aif libraries) * getting the config file for the automatic procedure After that, the automatic procedure can work independently.
Given the modular, reusable code base we already have now, this should be fairly easy to implement (although I still need to work more on aif, the way pacman functions are exposed etc)
Does anyone have thoughts, ideas, requirements, ...?
Dieter Sounds great! Any chance we could make it capable of importing/using redhat/fedora's kickstart files?
-- Tim Gelter Linux Instructor, Guru Labs LC
Tim Gelter wrote:
Dieter Plaetinck wrote:
Hi all, I've started working on a new procedure for AIF called 'automatic'. With automatic I don't mean a newbfriendly installer that automatically configures your xorg etc. I rather mean an installer that you pass a small configfile (disk layout, package list,...) so it can work non-interactively to setup your system exacty the way you want.
I hope I/we can someday implement such automatic installation in two ways: - an environment that gets loaded through by pxe booting and can work without any user input at all. Best case scenario we can generate such an environment like we generate cd iso's, and we automatically start aif with the automatic procedure. A sufficient live network config will be done (the bios will use dhcp before pxe booting) and the config file for the procedure can be made available for example by the user himself who generated the pxe environment. (low prio for me personally but maybe someone is interested in this, it's something to keep in mind) - we use the installer cd with AIF on it, you boot it and start "aif -p automatic" yourself. 2 more manual things need to happen: * Network config (for that I plan to write a simple script that uses the aif libraries) * getting the config file for the automatic procedure After that, the automatic procedure can work independently.
Given the modular, reusable code base we already have now, this should be fairly easy to implement (although I still need to work more on aif, the way pacman functions are exposed etc)
Does anyone have thoughts, ideas, requirements, ...?
Dieter
Sounds great! Any chance we could make it capable of importing/using redhat/fedora's kickstart files?
Kickstart files look reasonable simple. but still it's not what I had in mind.. maybe someday.. Not a prio for me right now. Dieter
Le Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:17:48 +0100, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter@plaetinck.be> a écrit :
Does anyone have thoughts, ideas, requirements, ...?
Sounds good. I've worked with FAI (http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/), which is powerful but a bit too complex. Its concepts are still good: - Hooks at many times of the setup procedure to run scripts. - Can be run from any media, such as CD-ROM or a mounted NFS drive after a PXE boot. - Error-tolerant, but everything is logged on each client. - Class-based: you define actions that belong to classes, then define the classes you want to run for each machine. It allows to make similar installations on machines that don't have the same hardware and need different drivers, for example. - Can run scripts in many languages including Bash, Perl, cfagent... Maybe you could take a look at it before starting, maybe even reuse some code (it's mostly made of Bash scripts). -- catwell
Pierre Chapuis wrote:
Le Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:17:48 +0100, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter@plaetinck.be> a écrit :
Does anyone have thoughts, ideas, requirements, ...?
Sounds good. I've worked with FAI (http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/), which is powerful but a bit too complex. Its concepts are still good:
- Hooks at many times of the setup procedure to run scripts.
- Can be run from any media, such as CD-ROM or a mounted NFS drive after a PXE boot.
- Error-tolerant, but everything is logged on each client.
- Class-based: you define actions that belong to classes, then define the classes you want to run for each machine. It allows to make similar installations on machines that don't have the same hardware and need different drivers, for example.
- Can run scripts in many languages including Bash, Perl, cfagent...
Maybe you could take a look at it before starting, maybe even reuse some code (it's mostly made of Bash scripts).
I know FAI. installed hundreds of servers with it at work :-) It's quite good indeed. I didn't know you could run it from cdroms (we always booted it through pxe) My end goal is to use AIF as much as possible, and being able to use the environment generated by mkiso and similar scripts for both the installercd and pxe. I haven't looked at the fai source code yet though, I'll take a look . Dieter
participants (4)
-
Aaron Griffin
-
Dieter Plaetinck
-
Pierre Chapuis
-
Tim Gelter