[OmniOS-discuss] CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS - Kayak for ISO alpha

[Peter Tribble]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 10:35 PM, Dan McDonald <danmcd at omniti.com> wrote:

>
> > On Feb 28, 2017, at 5:22 PM, Peter Tribble <peter.tribble at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Dan,
>
> <SNIP!>
>
> > Ok, some comments (I'm wearing 2 hats here, one as an omnios
> > customer, the other as someone who's actually written an installer):
> >
> > Overall, I think I prefer it to Caiman. But then I was never a
> > fan of Caiman, it was all so slow and klunky.
> >
> > The ISO is, how can I say this, rather bigger than before.
>
> Yes.  This is because I wanted to get it running first.
>
> I will note that if I used 7z instead of bzip2, I can shrink the ZFS image
> that lives in the ISO.
>
> > Right, so you've dropped the good old solaris.zlib approach
>
> Oddly enough, solaris.zlib uses 7z, IIRC.
>

Well, lzma or gzip. I use gzip in Tribblix because lzma didn't
give me a noticeable benefit and gzip was much quicker.


> > looks like a 64-bit only ISO. (The image you install is dual
> > 32/64-bit though.)
>
> OmniOS officially only supports 64-bit installs.  That we still provide a
> 32-bit one is an artifact of limited resources, not a statement of
> direction.
>

I just think you should be consistent.


> > The root archive is uncompressed. You could make the iso smaller
> > by gzipping the root archive.
>
> Can boot_archive be compressed?  I didn't think it could.
>

It's normally gzipped. (Without the extension.)


> > The root archive doesn't need the root reserve or anything like as
> > many inodes, which can save you quite a lot of space.
>

Another benefit from gzipping the root archive is that the empty space on
the ufs filesystem compresses away really well...


> > The loader menu on the ISO ought to have a 'boot from disk' option
> > that's removed for the installed system.
>
> Interesting idea.  I'll make note of that.
>

Thanks.


> > You probably want to be able to control the name of the initial BE
> > you create (think of the case of installing into an older system that
> > already has omnios installed).
>
> Currently no installer does this.  I don't want to go down the path of
> feeping-creaturism unless it's a huge win.  One user != huge.
>

I mentioned this because we see this request crop up for OI
fairly regularly. Essentially, how do I reinstall a broken system
without losing all my data? (And I implemented it for Tribblix
a while back.)

Your quick-networking idea is something I've been considering in a
> different context --> full DHCP-node install.  Basically, the media runs,
> guesses disks and interfaces, slaps bits, tells new bits to DHCP and DNS,
> and it's one-button install.  Again, I want to beware of
> feeping-creaturism, though.
>

Oh, I'm not saying you need to implement all this, or do it today; but
thinking about possible scenarios means you don't paint yourself into
a corner.

Thanks,

-- 
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
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