Kickstart and roles

[Michael DeHaan]

Mike McGrath wrote:
>
>>
>> Seeing I'm the one writing this puppy, I'll chime in briefly.   David 
>> is, of course, right on -- including the part about inflictions!
>> The basics are that in the end PXE provisioning is ultimately very 
>> similar to Xen provisioning, and we're creating a tool to allow both 
>> to be  simultaneously or independently managed from a central boot 
>> server.   At first, this will likely be a command line tool (with an 
>> optionally hand-editable config file), though we may see GTK 
>> interfaces later. Ultimately, this should allow a new bare-metal 
>> machine to be easily PXE provisioned to be a Xen host, and then from 
>> the kickstart for that machine, any number of domU images can be 
>> automatically installed (and provisioned with their own kickstarts, 
>> in turn, if neccessary) in one pass.   So things like "make this 
>> machine a Xen workstation with these 2 specific Xen guests" will be 
>> possible -- with a minimal amount of kickstart hacking. Advanced 
>> configuration of services though things like puppet is something I'm 
>> excited about, as it's a step beyond kickstarts.   Ultimately I'd 
>> like to see kickstart creation and system setup demystified as much 
>> as possible.  Handrolling of custom boot/provision solutions is 
>> always going to occur, but it needs to be easier.   Minimal 
>> kickstarts followed up by "make it so, number 1" orders ultimately 
>> make it less work for SA's for automated deployments/rollouts.   Some 
>> integration with or evolution of yam is also likely a good add.  In 
>> general, I like the minimal install ideas Mike points out as well.
>>
>> Comments definitely welcome.
>>
>> --Michael DeHaan
>>
>
> Is there a status page or any place I can follow the development?
>
>    -Mike
>
Not yet... as David L. said it's prob. a couple of weeks off, if only to 
add things like packaging and some more sensible documentation/examples 
and the like.   I'll post to the list when I have something for people 
to play with.  

--Michael DeHaan