What's magic about "setup"

[Roger Pease]

We are Sun's second largest OEM, and we ship turn key networks to our
customers.  We install a LOT of SunOS, so we decided to Re-invent the
setup wheel and replace it with some scripts of our own.  We did this
because we did not need all the flexablity of setup and because we wanted
to install the OS over the network from a disk drive (and also to move all
the config tech's interaction to the beginning of the process, so that he
can start it and walk away).

So we did some extensive fooling around with setup.  In the process of all
this I managed to get in touch with the guys in the CIM group at Sun.
These guys implemented what Sun calls the ATS (Automated Test System),
whereby SunOS is down loaded over the net and then booted up in order to
burn it in in Manufacturing.  They were kind enough to give me a copy of
the script they use to do this.  They just set up a "standalone" system.
(Supposedly, they just remove /boot and /vmunix when the system has passed
and is ready to ship.  But I have never bothered to check this out...)
They create a master image of each filesystem on the the server for each
partition.  Then the whole thing gets dd'd (root, too) from the server.

ANYWAY, I think I am safe in saying that setup does nothing magic.  It can
write disk labels from UNIX, though I don't think you'd call that magic...

Try this: take a system you're installing SunOS on, run setup, but when
you're done, DON'T REBOOT, instead select Quit.  Then have a look around
especially in the /etc/install directory.  Notice that /dev/xy0a (or
/dev/sd0a) is mounted on /setup.root.  It's kind of fun actually...  Since
tar works, you can save these scripts for later examination.

If you look at the scripts in the install directory, you'll notice that
setup just tar's in the whole filesystems, then goes into root and sets
the hostname in /etc/rc.boot and /etc/hosts.  If there are diskless
clients, it gets more complicated than that (mmmmm, love that ND!), of
course.

Anyway we got the whole thing working w/o setup and then we decided to
start shipping SunOS 4.0.  It has suninstall instead of setup.  Suninstall
is itself a script.  You can see how much was carried over from the setup
scripts...

Have fun...

	Roger Pease
	Valid Logic Systems, Inc.
	2820 Orchard Parkway
	San Jose CA 95134
	(408) 432-9400