Re: Debian Installation Goals (was: Happy Birthday)
bob@proulx.com (Bob Proulx) writes:
> Steve Greenland wrote:
> > "Steve M. Robbins" wrote:
> > > > 3) Debian will contain a installation procedure that
> > > > doesn't need to be babysat; simply install the basedisk,
> > > > copy the distribution disks to the harddrive, answer
> > > > some question about what packages you want or don't want
> > > > installed, and let the machine install the release while
> > > > you do more interesting things.
> > >
> > > Fascinating: ten years on and we still haven't achieved goal #3.
>
> <chuckle>
>
> > > I've only been using Debian for about 4 years; maybe some of the
> > > old-timers know: has this *ever* been true of Debian install?
> >
> > It depends. The number of questions asked has gotten much worse since
> > the introduction of debconf. This is not debconf's fault, per se, but
> > rather maintainers abdicating their responsibility to make decisions and
> > provide reasonable defaults.
>
> Agreed. Generally I just want a basic default which is working if
> possible but if not then not completely broken otherwise. After
> installation I can do whatever other configuration is needed. I
> really like the power of being able to run dpkg-reconfigure with a
> lower priority and to then fine tune an installation. I would also
> like it if instead of a preinstallation set of questions that all of
> the questions were asked postinstallation with some way to defer
> questions of lower importance and come back to them later.
As bad as it might be I would like to have a menu tree containing all
packages that can be configured and when you select one item a menu
would pop up with its configuration options.
One could probably parse the configure scripts to extract all titles
of the debconf dialogs and use those as item names. If one has a realy
good parser dependencies between questions could be recognised and
further depth leveles added to the menu or items greyed out.
> I have not really got the hang of this yet but I really like being
> able to seed the debconf database with the answers and then run the
> install non-interactively. This is basically the difference between
> someone who installs Debian on one machine and someone who installs
> Debian on many machines. I do both. One time setups with new users I
> am converting to Debian as I was myself was once converted. And also
> at work with many machines already installed and many more machine yet
> to come.
Have a look at FAI. Might be realy usefull to you.
> > OTOH, all the questions are up front, so that once it starts unpacking
> > and installing, you don't have to worry about it hanging on some
> > configuration question 5 minutes into a hour+ install.
>
> A godsend! But it is not done yet.
It should unpack while its waiting. So you just go for coffee and when
you come back you only have to answere a few more questions to be done.
> > That's much better, and that is the problem that Ian M. was talking
> > about, so we have, pretty much, actually solved the problem he was
> > stating.
>
> Negative. The methodology is in place to implement the solution. But
> it is not fully implemented yet. If it were fully implemented then
> the problem would be solved. But as yet there are still packages
> which do not use debconf or use it only partially and therefore the
> existing implementation is not yet done. (Yes, I need to do some test
> installs and then submit the results to the BTS. It is on my todo
> list.)
MfG
Goswin
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