Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Karsten Behrmann <BearPerson AT gmx.net>]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:41:20 -0600, David Kowis wrote:
>Quoting Eric Sandall <eric AT sandall.us>:
>> 
>>> I mentioned a onetime run script with a README file in /root
>>> It'd run the first time root logs in. Display that there's a README
>>> file (or maybe less the README for them, but that's kinda annoying)

I like the idea of a "man 7 smgl-intro" or something along those lines.
Put it into a smgl-docs spell so it isn't ghosting around the fs.
But we're a distribution, we have full rights to install stuff into
/usr/share/man or wherever we like to ;-)
(though obviously, we're smgl, so it should be disableable if the user
doesn't want it)


>> I prefer the motd as then they receive the message every time they
>> login (as root or not) until they get tired of it and modify. ;) I'd
>> hate to login as root, not notice the info (not paying attention),
>> reboot, and then wonder, "What next?".

How about
/etc/profile.d/smgl-doc-nagger.sh, which uses a count stored in /var/state
or someplace to make sure it only displays, say, the first 5 logins.
A bit magical, but it removes issues about "first boot" and about "non-
root login", though obviously non-root wouldn't be able to count down
the count. Basing it on time would have the classic problem if the user
only adjusts timezone / system time after setting the system up all the
way.

Personally, I dislike both the one-time notification (chance of missing
it) and a permanent notification. I don't want to be responsible for
half the smgl boxes having a 10-line blurb on every login just because
their admins are too lazy to change it ;)


>>> That's due to cruft building up in our chroot building process. We're
>>> not cleaning up after ourselves well enough when we're building our
>>> stable chroots. The stable-basesystem-0.16 tarball is actually missing
>>> shadow! And it's got the Xen interfaces in there, which shouldn't be
>>> there as well.
>>
>> I've only been running `cleanse` on these machines and then emptying
>> /var/cache/sorcery and /var/spool/sorcery before generating.
> 
> Yeah, we need to come up with a canned set of actions. perhaps a spell  
> or a script that can make sure our chroots are clean.
> First thing: emptying out that persistent.net.rules file or whatever  
> it's called. And verifying that all the appropriate spells are  
> installed. Althouhg, I would've thought cleanse would be doing that :/

Actually, it's not quite clear whose role it is to come up with those
chroots. I remember at one time, it was that the cauldron team was supposed
to create them, and so was responsible for making them as clean as they
need to be. However, back then the grimoire team took over that work in
order to take some work off the cauldron team.

That said, we will obviously come up with what's needed to clean those up
until stable release. Eventually, we'll probably make them (or something
equivalent) ourselves, too.


So Far,
  Karsten aka BearPerson

p.s.:
As we're chronically undermanned, anyone willing to help out with the
installer's own docs or this "intro to SMGL" manpage/README/whatever
should get a hold of me via email or IRC, and I'll try to get something
on wiki or git set up so we can coordinate work.

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