Question about the code...

[Paul Lussier]

In a message dated: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:03:16 PDT
"Bruce Edge" said:

>I've wondered about this too, that is the ability to manually run FAI config s
>cripts from a shell. The problem is that none of the environment variables are
> setup as they are when running from within rcS_fai.
>Would it be possible to create scripts/hooks/class files which, when their tur
>n to get executed came along, they dropped you out to a shell prompt with the 
>complete env setup as it is up to that point?
>
>As for the perl scripts, I ended up changing the #!/bin/perl on the first line
> to #!/bin/perl -d so that when the install hits that script, you drop into th
>e perl debugger and can inteeractively step through the perl script.
>It is missing some perl libs at that stage though, so a lot of the debug fucti
>onality is missing, but it is still usable as a trace tool.

Not a bad idea.

I think a better model would be to have a central file which contains 
all globals in it which could then be parsed by each script as needed.

The problem with this is that the FAI environment is completely 
dynamic and things get defined on the fly using the STDOUT of the 
various scripts.  As a result, the set of global/environmental 
variables can be different at different time during the install 
process.

Hmmm, maybe in addition to defining things on the fly and relying on 
the inheritance method for scripts to determine their env variables,
as globals and env vars are defined, they could be written to a file 
instead/as well.  Then have a script, for which its sole purpose is 
to load and eval those globals and env vars.  A little more work, and 
potentially messy, though.  You'd also have to have a script for each 
scripting language for parsing this file appropriately.  Could 
defninitely be done, but it will be messy.  Me thinks the best idea 
has already been laid down :(

Anyway, as I muddle on through this, I'm more than suitably impressed 
with all the work Thomas (and others?) have done on this.  It's a lot 
more configurable than I remember JumpStart being, and I won't go 
into the problems with KickStart :)

Well, back to figuring out why I can't get the 2.4.18 kernel and my 
lilo.conf file installed!


-- 

Seeya,
Paul
----
	It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
   but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.

	 If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!