[5408] in Release_7.7_team
ideas for a replacement for the athena linux installer
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (andrew m. boardman)
Wed Feb 1 01:34:31 2006
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 01:34:25 -0500
Message-Id: <200602010634.k116YPbQ017512@pothole.mit.edu>
From: "andrew m. boardman" <amb@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
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The current athena linux installer is based on an RHEL3 kernel that's
modern enough to support most of the hardware around MIT, although with
some increasingly baroque workarounds in some cases. Unfortunately, Red
Hat has screwed with RHEL4 enough to make basing our installer on it
annoying at the very least.
For the short term, I'd like to release a new installer based on the same
tree with only a kernel update. Based on the hardware support present
in the current RHEL3 kernel, that (along with native 9.4 installs) should
provide a medium-term fix for very little work. I've got a couple of
cooperative test cases for this around campus with shiny new hardware
that the current installer craps out on.
For the longer term, it looks like the unattended configuration
functionality in Red Hat's stock installer is flexible enough to replace
most or all of the functionality of our current installer, with the
possible exception of being able to remove the boot media early in the
install process. (Relevant to hotline, but maybe not anyone else.)
The latter is also potentially useful to the RHE release effort; it
appears trivial to create a replacement version of install media (disc 1
only) that auto-subscribes to the MIT RHN server, potentially with extra
software installed (or at least available via a custom RHN channel) as well.
(I'm surprised this hasn't already come up as an idea on the RHE side;
it seems to have gotten brief mention at a meeting a while back and then
been dropped.)
I plan to release the former (assuming it works) and investigate the
latter as time permits.
