Release a new Ubuntu Alternate ISO (was: Ubuntu for servers)

[David Abrahams]

Gary <gary at sergievsky.cpmc.columbia.edu> writes:

> Changing the subject line, because the previous one is misleading and
> not to the point. 

Yep, my bad.

> Of course, Ubuntu is excellent for servers. The problem is the disk
> partitioning software used as part of the installation.  If you want
> anything but a simple root partition with a swap partition on a
> single disk drive, it is not easily achieved.

There's a simple patch that will make it practical, but they need to
create a new ISO for the alternate install CD.

> That's what you get with automatic partitioning. For
> servers, this is not generally acceptable. For server installations,
> the Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS installer is very flexible 

FWIW I found the fedora GUI partitioning interface quite frustrating
and tedious.  With all the repetitive stuff I ended up doing, it was
not very amenable to keyboarding... but at least it worked!

> and offers a great many easily accessible options including
> LVM. Ubuntu Server is not simple to set up and quickly ready for
> production if you want to use the kind of hard drive partitioning
> that is usually found on servers.

True today.  Easily fixable, it seems, although it is somewhat
frustrating that the live CD installer cuts you off from all those
features.  I would find installation even of RAID/LVM configurations
much more pleasant from the live CD.  For one thing, it would have
been much easier to make the necessary patch with all the editors and
tools present!  It was a little tricky doing the whole thing with
head, tail, and cat.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com