From gmk at runlevelzero.net  Sat Jul 23 07:02:46 2005
From: gmk at runlevelzero.net (Greg M. Kurtzer)
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 07:02:46 -0700
Subject: [cAos] New cinch beta
Message-ID: <20050723140246.GA23649@titan.runlevelzero.net>

I posted some BETA cinch builds at:
   http://mirror.caosity.org/cAos-2/install/BETA/

We are going to get 1000 of these printed on 8cm CROMS for LinuxWorld
but it still needs more testing. On top of that, the vendor must have
the ISO's by early next week (July 25-26). Any help would be much
appreciated!

BTW, this version of cinch now also has a demo mode.

Thanks!
-- 
Greg M. Kurtzer
http://runlevelzero.net/
http://caosity.org/
http://warewulf-cluster.org/

Do not look anywhere for truth, for all that is needed is to refrain from
allowing concepts to arise.


From jp at jpsdomain.org  Sat Jul 23 22:59:44 2005
From: jp at jpsdomain.org (JP Vossen)
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 01:59:44 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [cAos] Re: cAos Digest, Vol 7, Issue 1
In-Reply-To: <20050723160035.7325420907D@mail.caosity.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0507240025040.15798-100000@mail.jpsdomain.org>

> Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 07:02:46 -0700
> From: "Greg M. Kurtzer" <gmk at runlevelzero.net>
> Subject: [cAos] New cinch beta
> To: caos at caosity.org
> 
> I posted some BETA cinch builds at:
>    http://mirror.caosity.org/cAos-2/install/BETA/
> 
> We are going to get 1000 of these printed on 8cm CROMS for LinuxWorld
> but it still needs more testing. On top of that, the vendor must have
> the ISO's by early next week (July 25-26). Any help would be much
> appreciated!
> 
> BTW, this version of cinch now also has a demo mode.

Tested caos-2-2.1beta1.i386.iso in VMware Workstation 5.

It didn't allow me to choose any options, especially partitioning, it just 
went and did the install up to Sidekick.  Is that expected?  If so I trust 
that's for testing only?  Or did I somehow trigger the demo mode (IIRC I 
just hit enter at the boot prompt)?  Despite the initial warning I'd be 
pretty annoyed if it went and did whatever partitioning it felt like, 
especially since it used 244M for /boot, thus wasting 224M.

Logo:
I don't remember the logo looking that "rendered" and cool.  Nice touch.

[nitpick] Load screen
Change awkward "The purpose of Cinch is to install your system with cAos!" 
to "The purpose of Cinch is to install cAos Linux on your system!".

[nitpick] Sidekick
In network config, "should this device be active" didn't let me choose 
"y," I had to type "yes.

[Slightly OT] For the time probe, cAos-2 should default to using the 
"pool.ntp.org" concept (like CentOS-4 already does).

NICE TZ config!  That may be the best I've seen, I hate most of them


Nice option for minimal desktop using XFCE!  I recently had to do that 
manually on CentOS-4 for setting up the very VMware machine on which I did 
this test and I'm still not sure I got it right.

GREAT idea to run ntsysv!  The first thing I do after running a typical 
installer, especially RH's bloated Anaconda (not even close to a) 
"minimal" install is turn most everything off.  What a fundamental "duh" 
moment,  I wish all installers did that.

I didn't like that I went into a GUI logon.  I'd rather have the option to 
pick the runlevel to start in (3).  I may be in the minority, but I 
believe that servers shouldn't have GUIs unless absolutely necessary.  And 
even when necessary, the GUI should only run when in use.  After all, 
that's what startx* are for. :-)

The hostname somehow ended up being eth0.jpsdomain.org (using DHCP on the 
interface).  Not sure if I missed another option or what, but that's kind 
of odd.

I ended up with a 640x480 display, which isn't large enough for anything 
anymore.  [OT] Not being much of a Linux GUI user, it wasn't clear to me 
how to fix this, since Xconfigurator went away a while ago and I can't for 
the life of me remember the various replacements.  No big deal.

HTH,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|        jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
----------------------------|=========|-------------------------------
You used to have to reboot the Windows 9.x series every couple of days
because it would crash.  Now you have to reboot Windows 200x or XP 
every month on 'Patch Tuesday.'  How is that better or more stable?



From gmk at runlevelzero.net  Sun Jul 24 00:08:43 2005
From: gmk at runlevelzero.net (Greg M. Kurtzer)
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 00:08:43 -0700
Subject: [cAos] Re: cAos Digest, Vol 7, Issue 1
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0507240025040.15798-100000@mail.jpsdomain.org>
References: <20050723160035.7325420907D@mail.caosity.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0507240025040.15798-100000@mail.jpsdomain.org>
Message-ID: <20050724070843.GD24888@titan.runlevelzero.net>

Thanks for the testing! Comments inline:

On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 01:59:44AM -0400, JP Vossen wrote:
> Tested caos-2-2.1beta1.i386.iso in VMware Workstation 5.
> 
> It didn't allow me to choose any options, especially partitioning, it just 
> went and did the install up to Sidekick.  Is that expected?  If so I trust 
> that's for testing only?  Or did I somehow trigger the demo mode (IIRC I 
> just hit enter at the boot prompt)?  Despite the initial warning I'd be 
> pretty annoyed if it went and did whatever partitioning it felt like, 
> especially since it used 244M for /boot, thus wasting 224M.

This must have gone into the demo mode. Are you sure you didn't type
anything at the boot prompt? Can you possibly confirm that?

> Logo:
> I don't remember the logo looking that "rendered" and cool.  Nice touch.

Thanks. :)

I am still hoping to get the grub splash screen fixed. It works on all of
my boxes, but there are some that it corrupts the display on. I can't
figure out why because I can't reproduce it and the people that can
reproduce it haven't been able to fix. Well, if anyone is interested,
caos2 grub.conf has the splash logo commented out. Feel free to test it
out, but be warned. If it corrupts display, you will have to fix it
blindfolded as the screen will be corrupt. ;)

> [nitpick] Load screen
> Change awkward "The purpose of Cinch is to install your system with cAos!" 
> to "The purpose of Cinch is to install cAos Linux on your system!".

Fixed.

> [nitpick] Sidekick
> In network config, "should this device be active" didn't let me choose 
> "y," I had to type "yes.

Yep. There was another (several) requests to change this. So I did, but
not in the version that you tested. ;)

> [Slightly OT] For the time probe, cAos-2 should default to using the 
> "pool.ntp.org" concept (like CentOS-4 already does).

I am not familiar with this concept.

What sidekick does now is takes an array of publicly available date
servers, and then randomizes them, and increments through them until it
successfully 'rdate's from them. Sidekick is not actually configuring
ntpd.

> NICE TZ config!  That may be the best I've seen, I hate most of them


Thank you. :)

> Nice option for minimal desktop using XFCE!  I recently had to do that 
> manually on CentOS-4 for setting up the very VMware machine on which I did 
> this test and I'm still not sure I got it right.

:)

> GREAT idea to run ntsysv!  The first thing I do after running a typical 
> installer, especially RH's bloated Anaconda (not even close to a) 
> "minimal" install is turn most everything off.  What a fundamental "duh" 
> moment,  I wish all installers did that.

Ha. Wait until you see configure-chkconfig! I had many requests to
remove the RH written config tools at least from the first boot config
(sidekick --init). They broke consistent look and feel, and didn't offer
features that I wanted. For instance, defaulting all non-system required
services to be turned off by default (perhaps another "duh"? hehe). Also
having a --secure option that can kill all services that aren't needed
for normal operation. Lastly, the convenience of starting/stopping services
via the tool as well.

configure-chkconfig --init will also run at system boot, and replace
ntsysv in sidekick (but ntsysv is still installable of course).

> I didn't like that I went into a GUI logon.  I'd rather have the option to 
> pick the run level to start in (3).  I may be in the minority, but I 
> believe that servers shouldn't have GUIs unless absolutely necessary.  And 
> even when necessary, the GUI should only run when in use.  After all, 
> that's what startx* are for. :-)

That is a good point. Right now, that comes from the configure-sysroles.
If X was installed, it defaults to run level 5.

Perhaps a question asking if X should be enabled by default is needed. I
will look into that.

I didn't want to create yet another tool just for something as minor as
a run level especially when those comfortable enough to only want text
are probably also comfortable enough changing inittab. I think a quick
question via configure-sysroles should be enough though. I will make
that change if you agree (question will only come up when run with
--init).

> The hostname somehow ended up being eth0.jpsdomain.org (using DHCP on the 
> interface).  Not sure if I missed another option or what, but that's kind 
> of odd.

Please send the output of the following:

   $ hostname
   $ grep HOSTNAME /etc/sysconfig/network
   $ grep DHCP_HOSTNAME /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

> I ended up with a 640x480 display, which isn't large enough for anything 
> anymore.  [OT] Not being much of a Linux GUI user, it wasn't clear to me 
> how to fix this, since Xconfigurator went away a while ago and I can't for 
> the life of me remember the various replacements.  No big deal.

That display configuration is because VMWare isn't supported without
installation of the VMWare tools or modification of the config file.
Xorg is usually very good at defaulting to a good solution, but I also
may make an X configuration sidekick tool. It isn't so hard actually as
long as X -configure can create a usable base. ;)

Thanks again for the test!
-- 
Greg M. Kurtzer
http://runlevelzero.net/
http://caosity.org/
http://warewulf-cluster.org/

Do not look anywhere for truth, for all that is needed is to refrain from
allowing concepts to arise.


From jp at jpsdomain.org  Sun Jul 24 16:19:23 2005
From: jp at jpsdomain.org (JP Vossen)
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 19:19:23 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [cAos] Re: cAos Digest, Vol 7, Issue 2
In-Reply-To: <20050724160033.A65C5209373@mail.caosity.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0507241511140.15798-100000@mail.jpsdomain.org>

> Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 00:08:43 -0700
> From: "Greg M. Kurtzer" <gmk at runlevelzero.net>
> Subject: Re: [cAos] Re: cAos Digest, Vol 7, Issue 1
> To: Community Assembled OS <caos at caosity.org>
> 
> On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 01:59:44AM -0400, JP Vossen wrote:
> > Tested caos-2-2.1beta1.i386.iso in VMware Workstation 5.
> > 
> > It didn't allow me to choose any options, especially partitioning, it just 
> > went and did the install up to Sidekick.  Is that expected?  If so I trust 
> > that's for testing only?  Or did I somehow trigger the demo mode (IIRC I 
> > just hit enter at the boot prompt)?  Despite the initial warning I'd be 
> > pretty annoyed if it went and did whatever partitioning it felt like, 
> > especially since it used 244M for /boot, thus wasting 224M.
> 
> This must have gone into the demo mode. Are you sure you didn't type
> anything at the boot prompt?
> ***Can you possibly confirm that?***

Well, that's the beauty of VMware, isn't it?  :-)

* Hit only enter at the boot prompt.
* Got "Cinch Sucessfully Loaded" and hit enter.
	[Nitpick/spelling = should be Successfully]
* This time I jumped into "assisted disk config"...  Very odd.  I'm using 
the same ISO with the same VM config (different VM as the first one is 
still up).  The only thing I can think of is that my enter key got stuck.  
That's lame, but I'm on a KVM and stranger things have happened.  ?!?
* BUT, it never asked me anything about the boot loader, it jumped right
past that and I ended up in Sidekick again...

...  OK, more messing around.  The enter key is definatly getting stuck, 
as the various feedback would scroll off the screen as it was doing 
things.  At first I'd though that was expected, but as I look closer it's 
not.  On my third install (brand new VM again), I got the same results as 
the first time.

So the question is now, why is this happening?  While this is a new server 
for me, and a new KVM setup, I've installed 13 other OSs (including 
cAos-2, CentOS-4, Debian, FC2,4, 3 BSDs, W2K and more) without seeing 
this.

Did the keyboard input method change in this version of Cinch v. the 
default cAos-2 version?  Or maybe there is just something about the VMware 
keyboard handler, but again, no problems with anything else.


> > [Slightly OT] For the time probe, cAos-2 should default to using the 
> > "pool.ntp.org" concept (like CentOS-4 already does).
> 
> I am not familiar with this concept.
> 
> What sidekick does now is takes an array of publicly available date
> servers, and then randomizes them, and increments through them until it
> successfully 'rdate's from them. Sidekick is not actually configuring
> ntpd.

pool.ntp.org is just a round-robin DNS to provide a place to point default
configs and automatically spread the load.  Since people a) don't pay
attention to the "correct" NTP guidelines and b) never change the defaults
anyway, this is very cool.  See http://www.pool.ntp.org/.


> > I didn't like that I went into a GUI logon.

[...]

> Perhaps a question asking if X should be enabled by default is needed. I
> will look into that.

That'd be nice.

> I didn't want to create yet another tool just for something as minor as
> a run level especially when those comfortable enough to only want text
> are probably also comfortable enough changing inittab. I think a quick
> question via configure-sysroles should be enough though. I will make
> that change if you agree (question will only come up when run with
> --init).

Yeah, that's cool.  As I said, I may be the minority, and as you said 
anyone who objects should be able to trivially figure it out.  It's just a 
nice touch.


> > The hostname somehow ended up being eth0.jpsdomain.org (using DHCP on the 
> > interface).  Not sure if I missed another option or what, but that's kind 
> > of odd.
> 
> Please send the output of the following:
> 
>    $ hostname
>    $ grep HOSTNAME /etc/sysconfig/network
>    $ grep DHCP_HOSTNAME /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

I was surprised on this issue not because the name was eth0, which may be
as expected when using DHCP, but because I never had the chance to choose
a name to over-ride DHCP.  Related to the stuck enter key issue?

[root at eth0 ~]# hostname
eth0.jpsdomain.org
[root at eth0 ~]# grep HOSTNAME /etc/sysconfig/network
HOSTNAME=localhost
[root at eth0 ~]# grep DHCP_HOSTNAME /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
DHCP_HOSTNAME=eth0


> > I ended up with a 640x480 display, which isn't large enough for anything 
> > anymore.
[...]
> That display configuration is because VMWare isn't supported without
> installation of the VMWare tools or modification of the config file.

Makes sense.  I'm new to VMware, so I just learned something...

Later,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|        jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
----------------------------|=========|-------------------------------
You used to have to reboot the Windows 9.x series every couple of days
because it would crash.  Now you have to reboot Windows 200x or XP 
every month on 'Patch Tuesday.'  How is that better or more stable?



From gmk at runlevelzero.net  Wed Jul 27 21:36:01 2005
From: gmk at runlevelzero.net (Greg M. Kurtzer)
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 21:36:01 -0700
Subject: [cAos] Cinch-2.1 (cAos Linux installer) released
Message-ID: <20050728043601.GA24936@titan.runlevelzero.net>

I have released Cinch-2.1!

Please take it for a test drive (literally because it can demo caos as
well as install it)!

   http://mirror.caosity.org/cAos-2/install/caos-2-2.1.i386.iso

or at your favorite mirror:
   http://www.caosity.org/download/mirrors?lang=en

Thanks and have fun!
-- 
Greg M. Kurtzer
http://runlevelzero.net/
http://caosity.org/
http://warewulf-cluster.org/

Do not look anywhere for truth, for all that is needed is to refrain from
allowing concepts to arise.


From gmk at runlevelzero.net  Fri Jul 29 22:32:04 2005
From: gmk at runlevelzero.net (Greg M. Kurtzer)
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 22:32:04 -0700
Subject: [cAos] cinch and sidekick update
Message-ID: <20050730053204.GB30116@titan.runlevelzero.net>

There were requests to bring in better wireless support to the installer,
so I updated sidekick and released a new cinch build to support this
(caos-2-2.1a.$ARCH.iso on your friendly mirror). I also posted the
latest x86_64 version.

cinch itself was not changed, just updated the core file system and
added wireless-tools to the corefs.

Please let us know if you experience any problems.

Thanks.
-- 
Greg M. Kurtzer
http://runlevelzero.net/
http://caosity.org/
http://warewulf-cluster.org/

Do not look anywhere for truth, for all that is needed is to refrain from
allowing concepts to arise.