On Sun, 11 Nov 2001, Tammy Fox wrote: > On Sat, Nov 10, 2001 at 09:57:53PM -0500, rpjday wrote: > > > > first, what is an "interactive" install? i'm guessing that it > > means, if i skip specifying some option (such as mouse type), i'll > > be prompted for it. is this correct? > > > > No. interactive means that it will prepopulate the screens with > the values from your kickstart file, but you will have to confirm > your choices by clicking Next at each screen. It is really for > debugging. (rather than post several smaller messages, i'm going to try to summarize a number of issues i have with kickstart.) 1) first, is this the right place to discuss "ksconfig" since, even though it's related to kickstart, it may be an independent utility? i'll bring up a few issues with it anyway, but i'm prepared to be told this is not the right forum. 2) i like the idea of the interactive install, but it brings to mind something i ran into in a version of kickstart in a previous version of red hat. i was trying to do a kickstart install on a machine that i did *not* want any networking config on, so i just left out the "network" directive. to my surprise, the kickstart install stopped at the network config screen and insisted i enter something. it was happy if i stated that i didn't want any networking and continued. only after trial and error did i figure out that, to bypass networking configuration, i had to put in the single line "network" with no arguments. that wasn't documented anywhere, and i'm wondering if this is still true. more to the point, this leads to a larger, philosophical issue ... 3) if i simply want to skip a particular feature of configuration, should i expect to simply leave out that directive from the kickstart file? this appears to be the case, *except* when it comes to configuring X, where you explicitly have to say "skipx". why the difference? why must i *explicitly* say i don't want to configure X, when for almost everything else, i just don't put in the appropriate directive? this is an inconsistent design. on the other hand, what if i want to set up a kickstart file in which i deliberately *want* to be prompted for mouse info, for instance? or any other option. is this supported? i guess what i'm thinking is that, for most ks.cfg directives, there should be three choices: a) don't configure *at* *all* b) configure with given values c) prompt me for this directive perhaps every directive should have a "--prompt" option that will explicitly require user intervention. in that case, the rather odd "skipx" directive would no longer be necessary. 4) regarding LDAP selection, i did finally notice in the docs that --enableldap and --enableldapauth mean different things, but in that case, why does ksconfig not distinguish between them? if you can specify one without the other, then ksconfig should give you that freedom. currently, ksconfig enters either both or neither, and does not distinguish. in a more general sense, if ksconfig is to be useful, shouldn't it support as much flexibility as the underlying config file it is building? 5) regarding ksconfig again, there is nothing in the package selection dialog that allows one to add individual rpms. this is inconsistent, since the firewall dialog allows you to add individual ports at the bottom. 6) once again, in ksconfig, the langsupport does not support selecting more than one language, even though that option certainly allows it. "langsupport" should be supported by a checklist, not a drop-down menu. 7) finally, the way option values are specified in ks.cfg are not done consistently. consider just two of them, both under "auth": --nisserver --ldapserver= why does one use a blank as a delimiter, while the other uses "="? clearly, both need an accompanying value, so why the differing aesthetics? this is a source of potential confusion for people new to designing a ks.cfg file. anyway, i'm pretty sure i have more issues lying around here somewhere if you want to hear them. rday
