On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Garrett Cooper <gcoo...@freebsd.org> wrote: > On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 9:16 PM, Josh Paetzel <jpaet...@freebsd.org> wrote: >> It's been incredibly busy for us in iXsystems land, with a lot of irons in >> the >> fire. >> >> One of the many things we've been working on is a new installer. Several >> months ago pc-sysinstall was imported into HEAD from the PC-BSD project. >> >> pc-sysinstall is a fine tool, and very useful as the backend for doing >> scripted installs. If you're using scripted sysinstall I recommend you check >> it out, it's a lot easier to use and configure than sysinstall, the >> documentation is much better, and reasonable requests for functionality can >> and will be brought in. >> >> This is all fine and good, but without a front end to generate the config >> files pc-sysinstall needs it's not much use to an end user for doing >> installs. >> We (and by we I mean the forces at iXsystems) have been working on txt- >> sysinstall, which is a front end for pc-sysinstall using curses and dialog to >> generate a pc-sysinstall config file from user input. What we've encountered >> is that doing disk configuration in dialog isn't possible, and we started >> down >> the road of using curses....but we already have a curses and dialog based >> installer, and wouldn't it be neat if we could use the disk configuration >> tool >> we are writing for FreeNAS, too bad it's a web app..... >> >> But if the installer just launched a web server..... >> >> Ok, wait a minute, that couldn't work...how would you configure networking? >> Oh wait, that's already solved in FreeNAS, before you access the system you >> use a console/CLI app to configure the network. Ok, but people do installs >> over serial ports....oh wait, you could run lynx from the console too... >> >> We quickly realized that the objections we could come up with were easily >> overcome, and the more we talked to people here at MeetBSD the more we >> realized it was a viable (and good) idea. People quickly came up with >> improvements. >> >> This gets us the best of both worlds. Want a super fancy GUI installer, just >> hit the box with firefox or whatever from a full desktop, want a text >> interface that's simple, need low bandwidth, running over a serial port, use >> the embedded lynx browser. Installing in a remote vm/cloud, just configure >> the ip and hit it with a browser (yes, we're dreaming up ways to do it over >> ssl and such) >> >> I'll do a better write-up very soon, I'm pretty tired now and have a long >> weekend looming, but just wanted to get the word out. >> >> Just to give credit where credit is due, this all started with Warner Losh >> saying, "Can you listen to a crazy idea I had?" It didn't take long to >> realize that it wasn't crazy, it was a stroke of genius. >> >> Secondary props go to Philip Paeps and Kris Moore for implementation details, >> Matt Olander for recognizing the benefits and approving the change in focus, >> John Hixson for the priceless look on his face when he realized we were >> serious about changing (He's done the bulk of the work on txt-sysinstall) the >> random NetBSD user here at MeetBSD (sorry I don't know his name) who said it >> was a horrible idea because it would "bloat the installer way too much" (I'm >> still laughing at that, he was saying something about floppies too, I guess >> we're locking out people using 386's or something.) and quite a few other >> people who are too countless to mention but offered random advice or >> encouragement. > > Just to add to that (because I do find it a novel idea), 1) how > are you going to properly prevent man in the middle attacks (SSL, TLS, > etc?), and 2) what webserver would you use? > I bring up the former item because I wouldn't want my data going > unencrypted across any wire, and what BSD compatible web servers did > you guys have in store and who would maintain the server, and what > kinds of vulnerabilities would you be introducing by adding a service > which would be enabled by default at runtime?
Sorry -- missed the SSL note. Other questions still outstanding :). Thanks! -Garrett _______________________________________________ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
