[Server-devel] Current Status of the XS Build Process

[Daniel Wyatt Margo]

So here's the writeup --

Right now, Holger's live CDs do not install a school server image. They
(are supposed to) install a very normal Fedora image. What Holger has
attempted to do is automate the installation such that when you boot from
the live CD, it immediately goes into hard-disk install from a kickstart
file, with minimal user interaction. It would be useful, but it doesn't
work, ostensibly due to bugs in anaconda. They are fixed in rawhide, and I
attempted to to build it with rawhide anaconda, but it wasn't stable. So
far as I know no one as the office has ever got those live CDs to work.

Again, the only thing Holger's live CDs are trying to install is a normal
Fedora image without OLPC-specific configuration. Configuration comes
after the install from the configuration manager, FAI. I believe his idea
was that you could package an FAI configuration repository onto the CD,
install it, and manage the OLPC configuration from there (so that the
initial OLPC configuration doesn't require Internet access.) Since
Holger's live CDs have never worked, I don't know if this works, but it
sounds reasonable.

Holger, if you could expand + detail on what I've said, that would be great.

What I've been doing is trying to package the actual configuration and
make a disk that installs a *working* school server, even if it is not
nicely automated. We need this badly for development purposes. I've pulled
a bunch of data off of sawzall and schoolserver about what RPM packages
and configuration files have been modified, and dumped it into a git
repository at
http://dev.laptop.org/git.do?p=users/danmargo/livecd-data;a=summary . I've
made copies of all the modified configuration files on schoolserver, and
packaged them with an RPM-safe install policy using some scripts I've
written, at
http://dev.laptop.org/git.do?p=users/danmargo/rpm-conf;a=summary . I've
built a live CD with the packages but not the configurations, and right
now I am going to add the configuration package to the live CD and see
whether that produces a second schoolserver (or more likely, a broken
machine.)

If someone who is very knowledgeable about the school server ever has some
free time, it would be very helpful if they reviewed my data, in
particular the packages on schoolserver, and could comment on which which
are meaningful to the schoolserver and why, and which are development
splash damage. There are ~56 packages.

- Daniel Margo