ServerPreInstallation

Revision 5 as of 2009-01-15 19:32:31

Clear message

Summary

We should look at the current installation design and remove any questions we can, add anything that we think is missing and have a firm grasp on our overall status.

  • Compare our installation to the current ones by Red Hat and Novell SUSE (Microsoft Windows?)
  • Examine whether our installation meets the common use cases (means specifying them in a specification)
  • Change the installation to meet anything that we are currently missing or over-complicating

Release Note

Rationale

We know that the speed and simplicity of the installation process is key to providing a "Just Works" experience. We want to offer the best default configuration we can, and offer the ability to set-up optional pieces (tasks), so we must balance these two areas. We firmly do not want a second stage after the installer has run. We should look at the current installation design and remove any questions we can, add anything that we think is missing and have a firm grasp on our overall status.

Use Cases

Assumptions

Design

Implementation

UI Changes

Code Changes

Migration

Test/Demo Plan

Unresolved issues

BoF agenda and discussion

Default keyboard selection to selection via a list rather than detection using typing letters. Want to be able to do a tree selection in tasksel, but that's not possible.

Proposal for 9.04

Umbrella blueprints:

Changes to Reduce the Number of Questions During Install

  • default keyboard-detection to "no" ... if you inadvertently hit "yes" (the current default), you have to go through dozens of key presses [done, console-setup 1.28ubuntu2]

  • try to auto-detect the timezone, perhaps?

    • Not *that* important, i.e. no need to spend a lot of time to implement

  • try to auto-detect the proxy details (remove question if not needed) (bug 209691)

    • Timeout is very long, corporate customers who have proxy setups don't want to wait 5 minutes.

Additional Changes

  • a choice to pick additional packages
    • Look into adding choice of tasksel or aptitude?
  • Allow for help text
    • Fundamentally requires a debconf protocol modification. Will need to be proposed upstream in Debian.
  • Check password strength
    • cracklib vs pam
    • Kees and Colin should discuss

* GTK front-end for d-i

Partman problems

LVM and root, var, home on a different position, is too complicated. Don't know where you are, cannot see visually what you are doing.

On LVM, just use 20G instead of all the space, so you can add LVs?

Sane LVM configuration by default. Defined max size for root, but not more, leave the rest of the disk free for additional partitions. Percentage up to a certain size.
Want to be able to edit automatic configurations like applied templates.

  • Evan to see if this is feasible within the constraints of d-i/partman.

                      4 G                    20 G
       +---------------+----------------------+-------+
       | All for root  | 4 GB + 20% for root  | Free  |
+------+---------------+----------------------+-------+
| Boot |                  LVM                         |
+-----------------------------------------------------+

Possible idea to consider sepearately, better tools (web based) to generate preseed / kickstart files.

Can we use ubiquity?

  • serial port support
  • preseeding?
  • easier beautification?
  • no LVM or RAID support
  • Jaunty+1 at the *earliest*
  • Evan thinks it's feasible, but Colin would know if there's any reason why we absolutely cannot.
    • Would need LVM support, RAID support, etc.
    • Would need to fall back to d-i if we cannot start a graphical session. We don't want a text frontend to ubiquity because that would create unnecessary layers.

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