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From: "Matthew French" <mfrench42@yahoo.co.uk>
To: "Albert White - SUN Ireland"
    <albert.white@ireland.sun.com>, <ilug@linux.ie>
References: <200208061310.g76DA3fE009664@sionnach.ireland.sun.com>
Subject: Re: [ILUG] Sparc Solaris (was: Dell GX260 V Redhat 7.3)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 15:58:19 +0100
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BAD MSG:

 > And you get a working version of your favourite KDE/Gnome desktop
> > instead of DTE, uhm, I mean CDE.
>
> um.. http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/ integrated into solaris.

Yeah yeah yeah. I tried it (over a year ago) and it sucked like a new vacuum
cleaner. Although I expect that it will be a lot better by now. What I would
really like to see is Gnome on one of the Sun Ray thin terminals.

> Out of curiosity, does `normal fashion` mean that you still have to do the
> interactive customisations or is it like Solaris jumpstart where you can
> specify everything on the install server, do `boot net - install` go home,
and
> come in to a fully installed and patched desktop the next morning?

Er, I mean normal fashion for a Linux install. This would be distro
specific, anyway.

I am sure it would be possible to do an automated install with a few script
changes. I would not be surprised if Debian does this already.

I do know that if you pass extra parameters on the boot command, they are
picked up by silo. So:
  boot disk linux

would not prompt for selection but would boot straight through. From there
it is a matter of tftp'ing the correct config file and the install would be
automatic from there on.

> I don't see why this should be a _major problem. The prom (ie the "ok"
> prompt)
> is almost at the hardware level and hence dosent depend on the os so you
> should be able to connect to that easily enough. Once the machine is
installed
> cant you just log in over the network? The network is the computer after
all
> (sorry couldn't resist!)

The problem is that the time between linux booting and when the console tty
drivers are started can be a black hole, without error messages or log in
prompts. The other problem is that sometimes Linux will drop in to the PROM
on shutdown instead of powering off or rebooting. Without a serial cable or
keyboard it is not possible to reboot the box without flicking the power
switch hidden at the back of the case.

I think if the console is ttya/ttyS0 it will drop into PROM. If it is
/dev/null then you do not get console messages but the box will shut down
properly.

- Matthew


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