Re: Proposal for a new CDD sub-project: Debian4Business
Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 10:34:50PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
>> Le Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 09:17:38AM -0400, Matthew McGuire a écrit :
>>
>>> a single tasksel system does sound nice, but it makes building the
>>> iso images for the installers impossible. If the user can select an
>>> essentially infinite number of tasks from the one interface then
>>> the installer would require a disk image too large for CD media.
>> Hi,
>>
>> I think that a solution was already previously proposed by me and
>> others: If the pacakges necessary for the installation of the CDDs were
>> not available, the tasks would be greyed, and when the network is
>> available, it does not matter that the packages pulled by the CDD are
>> not present on the physical installaiton medium.
>
> If the network is not loaded, then the network packages sources are
> remmed out by the installer, right?
>
> So if the local media has only the tasks that are available from local
> packages, the problem is solved, right?
>
That seems reasonable to me. Since the base system is installed by d-i
by default regardless of the task selection it seems reasonable that
tasksel remove items that cannot be satisfied by the contents of the
configured apt repository. After some brief looking at tasksel source I
think all the necessary features exist. Theoretically the tasks
directory could be populated with new task files by the CDD team as
needed. Additionally it seems reasonable to use udebs to do so. Since
there are no declared conffiles for tasksel this is probably the most
direct route to changing the available task list for a CDD. So this
supports the arguments given earlier about how to maintain the CDD
specific tasks. The more I look at this the more I think the trade-off
is worth it. This way a given CDD could have sub-tasks for specific use
inside the overall CDD. Imagine if you will a business CDD with the
following tasks:
debian-business-directory-server
debian-business-kerberos-server
debian-business-desktop
debian-business-ltsp-server
debian-business-ltsp-client
Ok, so that list may be overkill, but I think it delivers my point.
Would people be averse to this approach? If so why? Additionally are
there any alternate approaches? I haven't seen a detailed alternative on
list.
Now to figure out how to build a CDD specific d-i based on the d-i build
system. I noticed there are daily images built for business card and
netinstall images. Would someone be willing to share the daily build
scripts for these? I would like to see if something like jigdo could be
leveraged to help build CDD specific d-i images. Consider the
possibility that CDD images are officially released via jigdo. So that
we don't waste a bunch of disk space on the delta between the different
CDD projects and at the same time properly advertise the CDD as a
project internal to Debian. Yes, Debian Internal Project makes better
sense to me as well.
The really nice feature of this approach is the current installer disks
don't have to be changed. That is unless I find something that gets in
the way. :-)
Any feedback is welcome. This doesn't look as complex as I initially
thought.
Thanks,
Matthew
PS: I am not at all versed in debian-edu solutions so I welcome any
ideas from them or other existing derivative groups.
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