[No longer CC'd to tech-install?]

On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Richard Rauch wrote:

> If you know what you're doing with NetBSD, you only have two points, I
> think, where *you* are waiting for the computer.  One is the relatively
> brief point where it creates the filesystems (assuming that you aren't
> using an existing filesystem).  The other is where it unpacks the files.
> If memory serves, there is a brief spat of questions between those two
> activities.  Those questions you probably could answer *before* doing
> any of the work, which might go a ways towards making a semi-unattended
> install.

This is pretty much the case with other installers - RedHat certainly asks
you almost all of the questions at the beginning, and then goes off to do
its work.

Perhaps one of the major advantages of a decent unattended installation
system is the ability to run post-installation scripts. I certainly make
extensive use of these in RedHat, and I for one would love to be able to
netboot a machine and have it build NetBSD and go away and install all the
packages I want when I realise that I have to rebuild my demo box the
night before a show, fer example.

For me, that means a configuration file that sysinst can read which
contains a complete specification for what sysinst should do, and then the
ability to run a shell script after it's finished.

And if the format of the configuration file was such that you could
specify "Accept all defaults where not overridden" would mean that newer
releases of NetBSD would be buildable without changing the configuration,
so much the better.

-- 
Gillette - the best a man can forget