Server Admins: Why not Fedora?

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Fri, 8 Nov 2013 13:19:07 +1000
David Strauss <david at davidstrauss.net> wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 1:12 PM, David Strauss
> <david at davidstrauss.net> wrote:
> > Instead of a server DVD, I would prefer a straightforward way to
> > create a custom ISO based on a Kickstart file (which could even be
> > the one dropped by Anaconda). The current method is time-consuming,
> > error-prone, and impossible to do off a version of Fedora that
> > doesn't match the target release.
> >
> > With clever use of containers, we could make the process more
> > compartmentalized and possible to run on any current Fedora release.
> 
> It would be very cool to provide something like this from
> infrastructure, too. With a basic package selector, we could generate
> and allow download of the images. Some mirrors could run the tool.

This has been attempted many times in the past, without much
success. ;( 

Some of the problems: 

- It doesn't scale. You have 1000 people hit the site asking for 1000
  isos, and it gets swamped. 

- Mirrors will not run anything at all like this. Most mirrors won't
  even run a simple python reporting script. They want to just sync
  bits and thats it. I doubt many are running Fedora, there's probibly
  some RHEL, but also a lot of other distros, or not even linux at all. 

- There's no way to integration test that setup. People can (and will)
  ask for an image with httpd and lightttpd and get mad when they fight
  over port 80/443. 

Containers are promising... but IMHO still kind of early days. 

kevin
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/server/attachments/20131108/dc518166/attachment.sig>