SSH and the Ubuntu Server

[Chuck Short]

On 11/18/2010 03:08 PM, Mathias Gug wrote:
> Excerpts from Robbie Williamson's message of Thu Nov 18 13:34:58 -0500 2010:
>> On Thu, 2010-11-18 at 16:22 +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 10:08:47AM -0600, Robbie Williamson wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 2010-11-18 at 16:04 +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 10:49:38AM -0500, Marc Deslauriers wrote:
>>>>>> I think this screen is a good idea if in fact tasksel is moved to after
>>>>>> the first boot.
>>>>> We used to have a two-stage installer and it was a nightmare to maintain
>>>>> for several reasons.  Since we moved to a single-stage installer several
>>>>> years back, we've burned all the necessary code with fire and enjoyed
>>>>> it.  Please don't make me go back to that.
>>>> What if the Server team maintained the 2nd stage?  Then we'd be making
>>>> life easier for you, right? ;)
>>> Er. :-)
>>>
>>> (In seriousness, any good-quality second stage would require some level
>>> of cooperation from the first stage.  We tried that and it was awful.)
>> So I see the 1st stage as just installing the minimal server, then we
>> boot to a login prompt...user logs in and can either do his/her business
>> as desired or launch the 2nd stage (which they are told about in a 1st
>> boot motd-type message).
>>
> I'd add that the 2nd stage would just be tasksel.
>
> I don't know what the 2-stage installer was like back in the old days.
> The proposal discussed at UDS was:
>
>   * to have the installer create a minimal-lean install (ie 1st
>     stage - same thing as of today). It creates a basic working system
>     which upon reboot can be configured for its final role (either by a
>     sysadmin via a console or ssh login [1] or a configuration management
>     system such as puppet, chef, cfengine, shell script, etc...).
>
>   * Remove the tasksel step in the installer and add a note in the
>     motd pointing to tasksel so that a sysadmin can finish the
>     configuration of the system after reboot (as outlined in [1] above).
>
>     This would provide a similar user experience to the one provided by
>     the Ubuntu cloud images on EC2 and UEC. Once an instance is started
>     the following text is displayed upon login into it via ssh:
>
>       ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>       At the moment, only the core of the system is installed. To tune the
>       system to your needs, you can choose to install one or more
>       predefined collections of software by running the following
>       command:
>
>          sudo tasksel --section server
>       ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>     A similar message would be displayed when a user logs into the
>     newly-installed system (either via console or ssh).
>

Hi,

If that what you were thinking of a "second stage installer". Then I 
think you might want something in between, functionailty wise, d-i and a 
yast type program. But simpler.

chuck