[Rule-list] Pre and post install scripts

[Martin Stricker]

Marco Fioretti wrote:

> For example, this hook for pre/post install scripts sounds like
> something we could use to do highly customized install and slinky
> based *upgrades*, doesn't it? The scripts may be used to place on disk
> your existing dial-up parameters, or to maintain current config
> files.. etc..

Exactly. Of course, we will have to supply thorough documentation and
some sample scripts so even newbies should be able to write at least
very basic scripts.

As I learned there is a possibility to ask questions from the user while
runnig pre/postinstall scripts *in* the RPM package, but Red Hat staff
strongly discourages using this hack: It makes the usage of kickstart
files impossible. That's the reason the pre/post-install scripts need to
be modified before the install starts. This way multiple installs using
kickstart will be possible, but it's more difficult for the user than
just answering some questions...

Maybe we can add some questions to the install.sh of slinky asking for
some standard things like dialup configuration and aouto-create/modify
the corresponding post-install script. But I see a difficulty here: One
one hand we want to make the installation process as easy for newbies as
possible, but on the other hand we risk to make slinky too complicated
and resource hungry (reminds me of anaconda... ;-)) ), and put too much
work on our project... I think internationalzation is very important,
also some basic configuration like internet access including dialup
(which I miss in Red Hat installs badly). Then some really good
documentation so even newbies get the picture. More might eveolve from
user requests...

Best regards,
Martin Stricker
-- 
Homepage: http://www.martin-stricker.de/
Red Hat Linux 7.2 for low memory: http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/rule/
Registered Linux user #210635: http://counter.li.org/

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