Fedora Core 2 wishlists

[Rudi Chiarito]

On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 10:15:30AM -0500, Michael K. Johnson wrote:
> However, that won't be the ONLY feature of Fedora Core 2.  I'd like to
> hear people's wishlists.  Not everything will be possible, but it would
> be nice to have a good list from which to pick the possibilities, and
> from which to also pick ideas later for Fedora Core 3.

I only have a few quibbles - in the sense that they are not the end of
the world.

I propose having pam_mount shipped with Fedora Core. It is invaluable,
especially when integrating Linux into an existing Microsoft-based
infrastructure. I have deployed it with success on a number of systems
at this large, unnamed healthcare institution in SE Minnesota (the only
thing, along with IBM's plant, to stand out in an ocean of corn). Having
pam_mount is much better than any alternative, such as the existing
setups I found being used before my deployment - namely, storing
passwords in files or having one user mount a share for everyone else to
use promiscuously ...or *shiver* both.

I've helped a bit Mike Petullo with the spec file and testing, in
particular on multiuser systems. The only real hurdle at the moment is
tying some support into authconfig. After installation, pam_mount
requires being implanted into PAM's system-auth configuration file and,
of course, that's probably better left to authconfig. Adding pam_mount
support to Anaconda might also be ideal for some.

Another pet peeve of mine is a more comprehensive GROUPS file for rpm.
The current one is pretty anaemic. For example, I have been building
bioinformatic packages (good candidates for Fedora Extras rather than
FC, I guess) and, for lack of more descriptive options, tagged them all
with Applications/Engineering. I do know that the "Group:" tag has only
token value, but as a completist I would still like to see a bit more
choice. On the other hand, it's a good idea to refrain from getting
carried away and from defining too many new groups.

Then there's DHCP Vendor Class Identifier support for pump and Anaconda.
My understanding is that this made it to Red Hat's internal CVS
repository, but - quite obviously - was a bit late for FC1. I have
uploaded separate new patches for FC1 and RH9, along with source and
binary packages:

http://uberh4x0r.org/~yax/dhcp_classid/

I am going to upload a bit more information and a slightly improved
version of Chris Adams' custom-modules.pl, simplifying the creation of
new boot images with a custom/patched loader. That's what I really
needed when I was trying to test and debug my own patches.

Rudi