[geeks] Dell T105 server arrives

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 11:19:38AM -0400, Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> >>My initial impression is that Solaris is very slow to install, but
> >>then it always is.  Sun really needs to rethink their installer,
> >>because it makes a horrible first impression of system drive I/O  
> >>speed.
> >
> >Windows Vista has the right approach, IMHO - they simply lay down a  
> >complete system image, then delete unneded files once they are on  
> >the drive, rather than pick and choose individual files from the  
> >drive...
> 
> I prefer the UNIX approach done right myself.  I don't want to wait  
> for the full image to install and then delete things.

As I understand it, Vista is done in such a way that it is more of an
image copy.  Something along the lines of this process:
1) dd if=/dev/dvd/baseSystem.img of=/dev/sda1 bs=16k count=196608
2) Expand the file system on /dev/sda1 to fill the partition
3) delete unneeded files.

The key that makes this so much faster than the unix approach is that
the initial copy uses large blocks and doesn't mess with file system
operations.
 
> NetBSD has the right idea: a small base system that installs in no  
> time, and crystal clarity when adding the packages you need.

Sure, but even netbsd would probably install faster if they dd'd a 150
meg base system to the desired partition, then expanded the FFS to fill
the partition.  That is, that would be fast if FFS could do that, which
I don't think it can.