On Mon, 12 Nov 2001 11:01:33 -0500 (EST) "rpjday" <rpjday@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > 1) as i mentioned in a previous posting, there's the glaring > inconsistency in using "=" in some places and not in others, in the > following example in the very same directive: > > --nisdomain <domain name> > --ldapserver=<ldap server name> The docs are inconsistent here, anaconda isn't. It takes either one, with or without quotes. You can basically treat those commands as shells commands; the parsing is nearly identical. For those interested, "man popt" and look at poptParseArgvString() for details. > 3) in most cases, a single word directive seems to mean that that > directive is in effect, such as "text" or "reboot". so what's the > deal with "zerombr yes"? according to the docs, there is no other > valid "zerombr" directive, so doesn't that make the word "yes" > just a tad redundant, and inconsistent with the pattern of the > rest of the directives? This is actually on purpose. It is poorly named (as you note), but it erases quite a bit of information and we wanted to make it a bit harder to get that behavior. For almost all cases clearpart is fine. > 4) a lack of symmetry in directive options. for example, the > "bootloader" directive has the --useLilo option, but no --useGrub > option. any particular reason for this? useGrub is the default? Okay, so maybe that's not a good reason ;-) > 6) along with the previous point, the biggest drawback with the k.s. > config file is its inconsistency with the grouping of directives and > their possible options. consider: Agreed. The kickstart file is quite inconsistent. The real reason it's this way is that it was a quick hack into the Red Hat 5.0 (I think) installer, 90% of it done sitting at home one night seeing if it was as straightforward as I thought. It got documented, support tools got written, etc.... The file format is a bit odd, but changing it isn't quite strightforward either. We have some major partners and installations using kickstart widely, and they don't want to see if break without a really good reason. > 7) oh, and one final, real nitpicky point. the docs suggest *very* > strongly that you must write the directives in a specific order. > this wasn't true with earlier versions of kickstart -- you had some > flexibility. has that changed? The documentation is all. You can really put it any way you want. > what this suggests is that kickstart file directives are going to evolve > into a simple programming language. (sound familiar? check out the > RedHat/base/comps file, which defines what rpms get loaded at install > time. that file has conditional constructs which check if other rpms > have been loaded, what the architecture is, etc.) This isn't going to happen, I promise. What is going to happen (I hope) is that we'll encourage folks to do "interesting" kickstart-ish things in python, where you get a real programming language and I don't have to implement it ;-) You can do this in a sporadic way already, but cleaning it up and documenting it is high on my todo list. The internal structure of anaconda had to change quite a bit to make this a sane idea, but those changes got into 7.2 already. I hope this addresses some of your concerns. Erik ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | "Amazingly, there are significant numbers of 30-something women now who | | want to learn how to box - something that most sensible American men gave | | up years ago." - New York Times Magazine |
