On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 07:32:10PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > 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
i.e., "live CD"? Ubuntu's installers for ARM have followed this approach. The complication for ARM is that you can probably only boot from one device, which can complicate things like bootloader installation. > 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? Option two is certainly the thing we are closest to right now (i.e., nano). We don't have "clonability" yet, though when the installed system is removable storace (MMC/SD/USB) it's pertty easy to clone offline anyway. A self-contained installer which runs from initramfs (or whatever) would be more effort, so the feasibility really depends on whether there's something available which can already nearly do this. Cheers ---Dave _______________________________________________ linaro-dev mailing list linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
