Semi-Automatic Installation?

[Thomas Lange]

>>>>> On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:14:58 +1200, Sam Vilain <sam at vilain.net> said:

    > Ok, so you've got your nice automated build infrastructure and then
    > somebody says they want it to ask questions when there is no existing
    > profile there for a host.  Not only that, but remember what questions
    > were answered centrally for next time.
Mmmm, maybe you want to put all FAI class information (which host
belongs to which classes) and all variables in a database? Then write
a hook that extracts those data and creates the according fai files
(in class). Missing data will can be entered by a simple GUI and then
put back into the database. GOsa (https://gosa.gonicus.de/) does this
with an LDAP backend. But it stores ALL FAI information (even hooks
and scripts and disk_config,...) in LDAP schemes and receives this
data before task_defclass.


    > Now, presumably the CD installation method must do something like this
    > already.
No, the fai-cd installation is mostly fixed. It main purpose is to
easily create a CD installation from your normal network installation.

    > Has anyone looked at getting that pre-installation questions going
    > for "Semi-Automatic Installation", eg for network installs?
In FAI 2.8.5 we had an example of some simple menu in
templates/class/30menu.source. This uses the command dialog to pop up
a simple selection menu, so the user can choose which class should be
used for the installation. You can also use this for asking values
which are then defined as variables as in fai/class/*.var.

-- 
regards Thomas