moving kickstart forward

[Chris Lumens]

> The desktop case, where things are sized based on disk and RAM size and
> conditionally on EFI, might be doable with the addition of a few extra
> bits of kickstart syntax.

Do you have any ideas what you might like to see here?

> Well, basically I have to install so much crap that I'd prefer to do it
> while the system is actually up and running.  That's not really in the
> realm of something you'd want to do in kickstart, though.  Basically,
> things like Matlab and Mathematica are huge.

Yeah, understood.  I figured it would be stuff like this but it never
hurts to ask.

> Yes, that's what I'm talking about.  I know I can hack the dracut
> component of anaconda to pass more HTTP headers, but I really wish it
> could just POST some JSON or something with as much info as possible.
> Detected devices, DMI information, that kind of thing.

It's high up on the todo list now after reading so many responses.

> First, let me specify what happens on the machine while its installing.
> I do almost all of my installs to user desktops remotely.  If they walk
> into their office at the wrong time, they see the generic anaconda
> instructions and can get a passwordless shell.  I'd really like to be
> able to specify what they can see ("Touch this machine and I break your
> hands" | cowsay), and at least protect that shell somehow.

Some sort of locking or ACL came up elsewhere in this thread.  I'd
suggested it could be part of the %anaconda section we have now - we
could further extend that to lock down the console.  Seems reasonable.

> Secondly, I really wish we had some sort of installation console.  Currently,
> dracut boots, DHCPs and tries to fetch a kickstart file once.  There's
> no way that I know of to have it wait there until a kickstart file is
> ready.  If there were, an application could show an admin information
> about the machines waiting to be installed and allow parameters to be
> set and such.  If you've ever seen how the old school Scyld Beowulf
> cluster stuff worked, you'd see what I'm talking about.

I'm not familiar with it, no.  I'll take a look and see if I can't find
some screenshots.  I wonder if such a thing would be better provided by
another tool, though - cobbler or satellite or something.

> And going along with that, having some specified way to get progress
> information out of the installing system would allow a pretty complete
> system for doing a whole pile of installations (which is something I do
> twice a year).

This would fit in with much improved logging.

- Chris