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sm-discuss - Re: [SM-Discuss] ISO again (was: dw)

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  • From: Jeremy Blosser <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>
  • To: SM-Discuss <sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] ISO again (was: dw)
  • Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:46:44 -0500

On Sep 19, flux [flux AT sourcemage.org] wrote:
> Jeremy Blosser (jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org) wrote [08.09.19 01:09]:
> > I haven't yet, but doing those things isn't the whole point; it has to do
> > them simply enough that updating the ISO on a grimore release just means
> > changing the tarball and reburning so we can do a new release every time
> > stable updates.
>
> Actually, it doesn't. You can't just change a tarball to update the ISO.

For what I'm talking about you can, by definition.

1) boot as many places as possible
2) contains basic system prep tools (fdisk, mdadm, lvm, ifconfig)
3) has the latest grimoire tarball that was created as part of the stable
testing

Nowhere does that say the tools in #2 are the latest versions. Just the
latest tarball available to push to the installing system. Between
grimoire releases all the ISO updates required by #1 and #2 are if there
are new places to boot or the existing versions of the system prep tools
have become deficient for some reason.

Over the last 1-2 years I have installed at least dozens of SMGL systems at
work, and only the first couple had anything to do with our ISO. Since
then to install a system I boot it (from an ISO other than ours, since our
0.9.x series never had working LVM tools on the ISO; I haven't tried 0.10
yet), I partition it, I run dhcp, then I do
'wget -O- http://imageserver/image.tar.bz2 | tar -xjvf -'. Et viola, a new
SMGL system with the latest and greatest grimoire+local stuff in around 15
minutes, the vast majority of which is wget+untar. And it doesn't require
an ISO with the latest grimoire, or an ISO any more special than "has
working fdisk/mdadm/lvm/dhcp".

Many of us have been asking for an ISO that does only this for years now
because it's so trivial to keep current and for the majority of our
existing users it's all they need to build new systems and get them going.
I understand completely wanting the ISO itself to be current versions and
having some guided stuff for new users but the fact is that those things
have been delaying automatable ISO updates for years now. We've been
through at least 4 Cauldron leads in that time and each of them starts with
the same goals and the same issues in front of them, making a lot of this
conversation feel like deja vu all over again. Each one makes major
progress toward the "big idea" of an ISO, but doesn't get all the way
there, and the next tends to start over. And we still don't have the very
basic thing described above.

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