Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Casey Harkins <charkins AT upl.cs.wisc.edu>]

I'd like to make a suggestion regarding the installer and smgl specific
configuration. After the basic installation steps (partitioning, mounting,
transfer basesystem, compile kernel), I suggest we use collection of tools
for providing the remainder functionality (configuring/installing lilo,
configuring the network, configuring the localtime, etc). This would
benefit us in two ways:

1) Those who prefer to do things by hand can just exit the installer and
do it on their own. We must provide relevant documentation for smgl
specific things (i.e. network configuration).

2) For those that do use the gui's to configure things, keeping them as
separate tools allows them to be used at a later time (say to reconfigure
networking or localtime).

So long as we keep a consistent interface with the rest of the installer,
allowing them to be used as separate tools should not have any negative
effect on the installer, but give us a suite of basic configuration tools
for those that desire them.

I'd be willing to contribute to these tools if the install team deems this
approach appropriate. The network configuration utility I wrote last fall
is an example of how these tools might function, however, it may need to
be re-written to adhere to the language and interface style of the
installer.

see http://www.pobox.com/~charkins/netconf.sh.bz2

-casey