Public SourceMage Discussion List

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

This is entirely possibly just as spells. I recently upgraded all of our 
Linux desktops to (a perverted version of) SourceMage. The installation 
process went something like this:

        1) install from iso (configure net and hostname)
        2) scribe add mycustomgrimoire
        4) sorcery system-update
        5) cast workstation (from mycustomgrimoire)

workstation was a "metaspell" just like the gnome/kde profile spells. It
depended on a number of other spells, some of which were more "metaspells"
that had POST_INSTALL's to copy configuration files in after its
dependencies (the real spells) were installed.

In addition I have 2 other top level "metaspells" for desktops: laptop, 
standalone. Each have some small differences, but all depend on a common 
desktop metaspell which depends on all the standard requirements for our 
desktop machines (xfree, icewm, openoffice, mozilla, java, cups, etc). 

Instead of desktop directly depending on icewm, it had a dependency on 
myicewm (the names were actually based on our company initials not the 
stupid my prefix). myicewm depended on icewm and copied custom icewm 
configuration files from the spell directory into /etc/icewm. There were 
other spells that did this as well (cups, wdm, rox, etc). 

Our printers were even handled this way. All the desktop machines had cups 
installed (because the desktop spell depended on it), but the printers 
were different on many of the machines, but not always (for networked 
printers). So, one spell got created for each possible printer that could 
be hooked directly to a machine, and one for each network printer. Casting 
'lj8550gn' for example would automatically add the LaserJet 8550 GN to 
cups.

On top of *all* of this (here comes the perversion part), I actually used
a single machine as a "reference"  machine which built all the spells used
and created a custom binary grimoire for all the spells used. I wouldn't
recommend the binary approach quite yet, it is, and still proving to be a
pain right now.

Anyway, this is kind of a long-winded response, but I believe the current
system is capable of this. Anyone could create a grimoire with spells like
this (webserver, ftpserver, mailserver, etc) which simply depended on the
spells it needed and did the configuration in POST_INSTALL.


-casey




On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Jaanus Heeringson wrote:

> While I find the notion of theming SMGL to SF or Fantasy related concepts 
> refreshing, there are in my opinion other things that could be done in the 
> functional aspect of the distro.
> 
> I will soon be running a specialized hosting service with a couple of 
> racked 
> computers in a co-location facility(yes, I might have capacity for 
> SMGL-stuff), and I'm currently underway of settings up the servers. What I 
> really would like to see is a second level of abstraction for in my case 
> installing single or multiple task servers, like:
> 
> [name of command] webserver
> [name of command] mailserver
> [name of command] dns
> etc.
> 
> I don't just mean spells like the kde or gnome2 profile ones, but something 
> more integrated that not just installs the various spells, but also 
> integrates them into a working environment. What I'm basically looking for 
> is 
> a "recommended/preconfigured setup" concept. Choice is good, but it can 
> also 
> get tedious, cumbersome and repetitive .
> 
> As you might suspect I'm mostly used to running SMGL in a hedless 
> environment... I actually have no idea what the majority of you use SMGL 
> for, 
> but I find this distro to be exellent for server puposes.
> 
> -- 
> MVH
> 
> Jaanus Heeringson
> 
> Underwerks Design
> ?leg?dsgatan 424
> 43150 M?lndal
> Sweden
> 
> Mobile: +46 709 492609
> Phone: +46 31 402980
> 
> http://www.underwerks.com
> mail: jaanus AT heeringson.com
> 
> 
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