GUI

[Dashamir Hoxha]

On 06/24/2011 03:04 PM, Ahmed Altaher wrote:
> Dearest all,
> 
> Now, I start working on GUI for FAI, and I already read the concepts at
> FAI wiki,
> but still some confusion related to class items, in more details the
> targeted operating system and software packages.
> 
> I appreciate advices and technical guide if possible.

Did you check DCDC: http://dc2.sourcecode.de/ ?
I don't know whether it is related somehow to
http://wiki.fai-project.org/wiki/GUIConcept

Also, did you try m23:
http://m23.sourceforge.net/PostNuke-0.750/html/
Probably you can get some ideas from its GUI.
Again, I don't know whether it is related somehow to FAI.

Anyway, since you are asking for advice, let me give
my opinion, although I am not an expert on FAI (and
this is obvious, since I still haven't managed to make it
work properly).

My opinion is that FAI doesn't need a GUI at all.
In particular, the GUIConcept described on wiki
is too much complicated and not so helpful. I don't
need a Web GUI to edit a config file, because I can
do it much better with vim. What I need is guidance
on how to build a proper configuration that works
for my case.

So, I think that a configuration wizard (not necessarily
GUI) would be much more useful. This wizard will try to
auto-detect some things and will ask some questions,
and based on the answers and the settings that were detected
will build a working '/srv/fai/config/' dir, which I can
further customize manually. When the setup script (wizard)
is done, it can also generate a document, pointing out
the things that can be further customized and how it
should be done.

If it is text-based, it can be wrapped easily by a GUI app
that asks the same questions and presents the same choices.

The wizard can ask for example about the OS that will be
installed on the clients and present a list of the OSs that
it supports (Debian, Ubuntu, Edubuntu, CentOS, etc.).
Then it can ask whether this OS can be installed alongside
with windows, or will use the entire disk.
It can also ask for the password of root, etc.

Basically it is going to be something very similar to the
installation program of Debian, or Ubuntu, or CentOS.
With the answers that it gets, it builds proper FAI config
files.

However, since I am not expert on FAI config, I am not sure
whether this is a good idea or not.

Regards,
Dashamir

-- 
Dashamir Hoxha
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