OemConfigServer

Revision 9 as of 2009-01-23 02:14:40

Clear message

Summary

OEMs willing to ship server with Ubuntu pre-installed are blocked by the fact that oem-config currently only provides a graphical user interface. We need to develop a curses-style frontend for oem-config. In parallel, people building virtual appliances need a way to offer their users a way to perform the base configuration of their appliance upon first login.

Release Note

oem-config can now be used by hardware vendors to ship their servers with Ubuntu pre-installed, thanks to a text-based interface that is now available at first boot. Additionally, oem-config can now also be used by virtual appliances to define base parameters of the appliance during the user's first login.

Rationale

Use Cases

  • OEM wants to ship his server with Ubuntu Server Edition pre-installed but still let the end user specify the last part of the installation.
  • Joe buys a server with Ubuntu pre-installed, the first time he boots it, he is requested to specify
    • account information and password
    • Timezone
    • server name
    • ip configuration
    • Tasks to install (same list as the one offered on the server installer)
  • ISV ships a whatever server virtual appliance and needs the end user to configure the last part of the install after the user has logged in for the first time. ISV needs to be able to modify the questions in a reasonable way without having to recompile the tool.
  • The Ubuntu team needs to have a way for the user to initialize base configuration option when first starting a base image provided on some cloud (such as EC2)

Assumptions

  • oem-config can be modified to be called as part of a first login script

Design

This should basically keep the same design oem-config uses on the desktop if this can be done with the above assumptions.

We will modify oem-config's frontends (including the new debconf frontend) to fetch the set of pages to display from debconf.

Implementation

  • Add a netcfg component
  • Add a tasksel component

  • Add a curses-style 'debconf' frontend to the existing ones in oem-config [done, oem-config 1.54.2]

  • Fix bug 28890 so that any timezone can be selected even with a plain debconf frontend [done, tzsetup 1:0.24ubuntu1]

  • ...

Test/Demo Plan

CategorySpec