Proper way to find out if an (initial) installation is being performed?

[andrew bezella]

On Tue, 2012-05-22 at 12:56 +0200, Thomas Neumann wrote:

i haven't tried softupdate, so if your goal is to use that i may not be
addressing the root of your question.  however, from what i can see in
fai 3.4.8:

> a) What's the difference between [/var/run/fai/FAI_INSTALLATION_IN_PROGRESS 
> and $do_init_tasks]? Is there any?

it looks like $do_init_tasks is related to whether fai is "called as an
init substitute" (/usr/sbin/fai:278).  FAI_INSTALLATION_IN_PROGRESS
appears to be a stamp storing the pid of an in-progress installation.

> b) What is the proper/best/most obvious/recommended way to let code run
> only during the initial installation?

i use:
if [ -n "$flag_initial" ]; then
(cf. section 8.3. "The setup routines of the install clients" in the FAI
Guide)

> c) Does install/dirinstall make a difference?

unsure.  i only use $flag_initial for disk-related changes in my
configuration (partition and mountdisk hooks), so they're not relevant
to a dirinstall.  you could (as mentioned in the guide) use a
class/*.var snippet to set it if desired.

-- 
andrew bezella <abezella at archive.org>
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