On 13/01/16 19:30, Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 07:59:43AM -0600, Alec T. Habig wrote:
>> Konstantin Olchanski writes:
>>> The installer for both have the same idiotic "you *must* create a fake
>>> user or no login prompt for you!",
>> If you're not making a local user, then you've probably got a network
>> authentication scheme.
>>
> Indeed. We use NIS. Support for NIS was removed in the el7 installer. Rejoyce!
>
>> In which case, you're probably deploying more than one machine.  Take a
>> look at making a kickstart file to automate the install process.  In
>> kickstart, you don't have to make a dummy user, you can just define your
>> network authentication setup.  And much, much more: then use that same
>> script to install on as many machines as you want.
>>
> Indeed. Have been using kickstart installs for years. CD/DVD kickstarts,
> PXE-network-booted kickstarts, now mostly USB-flash-booted kickstarts.
Have you looked at / tired cobbler? It's great for larger 
deployment but also good for smaller, even only a few 
machines environment.
It's not too heavy, not to over complicated and quite 
flexible, it's all what you do already, only it glues it all 
together + a web interface.
And with good support as it's Redhat's own thing, or was, I 
think.

>
> In our environement we cannot do a one-size-fits-all kickstart,
> so possibility to configure NIS during installation was quite handy.
> Now it becomes a post-install step - login as root, run authconfig.
>
> Actually now, due to this "must create, then delete fake user, which will also use a UID
> colliding with our historic UID allocation scheme", non-kickstart vanilla
> installer is pretty much useless.
>
>>> and the same "you *must* use the disk partition tool designed by
>>> dummies for dummies".
>> likewise solved by kickstart.
>>
> The kickstart disk partitioning tool is even dumber than they new GUI tool,
> only useful for "one-size-fits-all" cases where you also do not mind accidentally
> deleting the contents of all disks. (yes, open the machine, disconnect disks,
> install, reconnect disks, close the machine, thanks, but no thanks).
>
> At least the el7 installer does not overwrite the bootloader of the *installer* disk
> and seems to correctly install the boot loader for raid1 mirrored slash partitions.
>
> P.S.
>
> I keep banging about all this stuff because over the last 20 years all I see
> is each new installer only reluctantly fix a few of the old bugs, but consistently
> add new "features" which are not improvements.
>