On Wednesday 01 June 2011 16:56:07 Dave Martin wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 03:36:47PM +0100, Wookey wrote:
> > +++ Arnd Bergmann [2011-06-01 16:11 +0200]:
> > > On Wednesday 01 June 2011, Wookey wrote:
> >
> > > I absolutely agree that we should consequently think beyond image
> > > generation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a CD image
> > > to perform an unattended installation is a better answer.
> > >
> > > My main question to this is "install from where?".
> >
> > I'd say the default case (at least for current hardware) is booting
> > from SD or USB stick and installing from the network. (Which is how I
> > install PCs these days too - it's a very long time since I got a CD
> > out :-)).
Yes, me too.
> > > but that doesn't necessarily mean that a CD image
> > > to perform an unattended installation is a better answer
> >
> > I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you suggesting that there is some
> > third way between a locally-bootable installer image and pre-built
> > images? (In which case what - I don't see this), or just that CDs are
> > no longer the default media (agreed).
One approach that seems to be getting more popular these days is
to have a bootable system as a USB image, with a way to clone that
installation to another drive. This is arguably a bit different
from the classic installer where you boot a very small image
(not made of regular packages but e.g. udeb instead of deb,
or purely busybox based) that installs a system to the final
destination from scratch.
> If we can move the entire installation system to a ramfs on boot, we can
> unmount and free up the boot device, allowing the system to be installed
> in-place.
This is probably the main question: If we want an installer, should
it be something that boots as an initramfs and is able to install in
a very flexible way, or do we instead build a minimal image that
basically includes everything needed to add more stuff through
apt-get, possibly with a way to clone itself to another drive?
Arnd
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