Re: [HEADS-UP] Rawhide: /tmp is now on tmpfs
Again: I'm perfectly happy if it is rejected as a feature. I don't really care either way. What I'd really hate to see is a checkbox in the installer so we are compelled to test both variations... Yeah, I won't be adding any checkboxes to have people pick their /tmp style. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Install Fedora Button for LiveCD
Yesterday night I noticed an IRC conversation on #fedora-desktop about this, and suggested that an actual window would be a lot better than a notification. Kalev, Matthias and the people there agreed with me, so I went ahead and wrote some code that does just that [1]. Screenshots can be found here [2] [3]. I showed this today to Matthias and other people in the RH office, and the reception was good; people agree it's a good improvement over the proposed notification for F17. The text in the window comes from the result of this thread's discussion. What do you think? [1] https://github.com/cosimoc/fedora-welcome [2] http://i.imgur.com/8vRcO.png [3] http://i.imgur.com/gF0UJ.png Yeah, this looks really well done. Shall we pull it into the anaconda git tree for F17? - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Booting Fedora from LVM with grub2
Just out of curiosity: Your description makes me assume that the installer in the future still don't do things like partitioning, formating or installing a basic set of packages in the background while the user (which has a high latency/response time) is asked questions about the root password to use, users accounts to create or which timezone the system is in? Just wondering, because the Ubuntu installer does things like that, which makes the installation a little bit quicker. This is the direction we are heading, though it's uncertain yet whether this part will be in F18 or will have to get put off until F19. Just getting a new, relatively bug-free UI in is a lot of work for a single release. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Booting Fedora from LVM with grub2
Now my understanding of that doesn't include anything about removing custom partitioning. It's all about splitting up the functionality of anaconda into two distinct parts - the GUI configuration part, which I would expect still to contain custom partitioning, and a back-end that implements the configuration, where the configuration is passed to it in the form of a kickstart file (either the output of the GUI part, or a kickstart file prepared earlier by the user). This is basically correct, though I doubt the kickstart-based action is going to be all that noticable to the user. From an implementation perspective, it certainly is very appealing though. My understanding is based entirely on Adam's description since I'm not involved in anaconda development, but it strikes me as being a good thing as it would split one large process into two, presumably smaller ones, which would help solve the problem of running anaconda on machines with less memory. The memory consumption was largely based upon merging the initrd and the stage2 image into one very large initrd that had to be in memory. However, we've made additional changes that split it back up (though, not in an annoying way like it used to be) that means much less stuff needs to be kept in memory. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Booting Fedora from LVM with grub2
That's my understanding as well so it's not removing functionality but rather the underlying mechanism and implementation of them. This is good because it will allow a consistent outcome whether using the GUI, a kickstart file or something else like media and appliance creator and likely considerable simplification of the code too. I don't think we've removed any functionality in this new UI. And yeah, it will certainly allow for more consistency and much simpler code. We're eliminating a whole lot of old, crufty, hand-written UIs here. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: anaconda poor error handling
Just tried (and failed) update f15-f16. Using dvd (most reliable method). Went fine until I hit an error, trying to update ipython. At this point, anaconda just quit. No hints given what the issue was. No offer to try to report the error. It mentioned that it _might_ be caused by a problem reading the media. Switch consoles, I saw no hint of an I/O error. My guess is it might have been a cpio error because I had a newer ipython installed via easy_install. After trying various strategies to rescue, I gave up and did clean install. /tmp/anaconda.log, /tmp/syslog, and /mnt/sysimage/root/upgrade.log would all be helpful things to see right now. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: What's this /run directory doing on my system and where does it come from?
I just uploaded a new version of systemd into F15, which establishes a directory /run in the root directory. Most likely you'll sooner or later stumble over it, so here's an explanation what this is and why this is. On behalf of everyone at anaconda, thanks for fixing something we've all long-since hated. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Minimal install option (was Re: Services that can start by default policy feedback)
This was the same realization that led to the removal of the labeled minimal install, too many people just wanted to argue over the meaning of the term minimal. ? There's still a 'minimal' radio button in the installer at the package set selection stage. I know, I just clicked on it not half an hour ago in the F15 Alpha RC1 installer. :) Is it meant to be gone? It was there a long, long time ago. It was taken away a medium long time ago. It came back a short long time ago. It's still there. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Plans for BTRFS in Fedora
1) Fedora 16 ships with BTRFS as the default root filesystem. 2) Fedora 16 ships without LVM as the volume manager and instead use BTRFS's built in volume management, again just for the default. 2) Anaconda support. I've already talked with Will Woods about this some. Really anaconda will format a normal disk with BTRFS with no problem today, the biggest issue here is adding the volume management stuff and allowing users to create subvolumes via anaconda. Given the slate of changes we have lined up for F16 anaconda (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Features), I don't know that adding another major storage change is going to happen. I think in large part, we were hoping to be done with major storage changes for a release or two and work on other less touched areas instead (like the UI). But, perhaps we can find some time somewhere. Knowing what the scope of changes looks like might help with the planning a bit. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Plans for BTRFS in Fedora
1) GRUB support. Edward Shishkin did GRUB1 patches for BTRFS a while ago, but they were obviously never merged upstream and were also not included into fedora. These would either need to be cleaned up and put into our grub package, or we'd need to put /boot on a different filesystem. I personally hate the idea of having a non-btrfs /boot partition but I'm not the one in charge of GRUB. Perhaps if we are going to the pain of getting btrfs patches working and stable, we could just look at moving to grub2? It's planned: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Features/Grub2Migration - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [Test-Announce] Fedora 15 Alpha TC2 Available Now!
Hmm, also what does this do to PXE booting. IIRC there is a (relatively low) limit on the size of the initrd loaded by pxelinux. It's worked fine for me in all systems tested. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora 15, new and exciting plans
* btrfs (Is this ready to be default? :) If so, would that warrant a change in our lvm by default setup? I don't think we are quite ready for this yet. I do have btrfs strategy on my todo list, though. I'm hoping we can start talking at FUDCon about what we want btrfs to do for us, possibly taking the place of LVM. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora 15, new and exciting plans
Agreed, my plan was to take away the option for F15 (I sent the anaconda patch already right?) and leave it as an optional thing for at least 2 releases until we even begin to discuss setting it as default. Yep, it's been in for quite a while now: commit 8f4340dc86f515cd2f6571c06b790ab420f719b2 Author: Chris Lumens clum...@redhat.com Date: Fri Sep 24 15:52:18 2010 -0400 btrfs will be a supported filesystem in F15 (josef). Overall, this sounds like a fine plan to me. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Anaconda suggestion...
So I'm in the process of upgrading (using preupgrade) from F13 to F14, something I typically do around the RC phase, anyway, that's beside the point. All the packages have been installed, but I'm at the point where I get Finishing upgrade process. This may take a little while and a 'progress indicator' on crack. It flies around quickly back and forth for a bit, pauses, then flies around some more. Here's my suggestion. It would be great if this dialog could be a little more specific about what it is doing. I'm guessing that since I'm doing an upgrade this box is running all the post-update scripts and as such can't give a proper progressbar as it doesn't know how long it will take. That's fine. However its been running for nearly as long as it took to 'install' the 2089 packages that got upgraded/installed. If it is doing the cleanup/post upgrade package script thing, even just doing something similar to PK where it shows which package is doing what. I don't know if it is feasible, but it would be nice to know what is going on... Yeah, that whole area is not at all ideal. I'm aware of it: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=493249 Perhaps I'll spend some time around F15 figuring out what we can do. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Ubuntu 10.10's installer looks rather nice
Anaconda goes though everything step-by-step instead, asking one question after another, doing some work inbetween (partitining), asking more questions (packages to install) ... We have worked a little to reduce this over time, too. If you remember we used to have a confirmation screen after picking your packages. The result of that was that many people would click Next, go away to do something thinking packages were being installed, then come back much later only to see that the confirmation screen is still there. But yes, there is always more to do. Dunno how hard it would be to change anaconda to have such an overview screen. Maybe it isn't *that* hard after all as we have kickstart. So for a interactive install anaconda could collect all info from the user, compile a kickstart file from that, then feed the install machinery with the just-generated kickstart file. We have talked about doing just this. I don't imagine it's terribly difficuly, with the exception of storage. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Ubuntu 10.10's installer looks rather nice
Useless waste of time. Just grab Ubuntu iso and see a stunning gap in both technology and usability between anaconda and their own installed. Does the Ubuntu installer support installing to iscsi? Multipath? CCISS? Fully automated installation? Install over VNC? Installation from NFS, ISO on NFS, ISO on HD? Live images on USB keys? Driver disks? Do you have any idea how much crap anaconda really does? - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Ubuntu 10.10's installer looks rather nice
- downloads updates in parallel too Package updates? - uses IP geolocation to guess the user's timezone and keyboard settings (it's been 100% correct for me each time) We can do this, it's just never really been brought up. I'd like to rework a lot of the l10n stuff anyway, there just never seems to be time. - suggests a username and hostname based on the user's real name (Mac OS X's installer also does this -- it's a nice touch) If DNS knows a hostname, we will suggest that. Of course it's not foolproof. mgracik is working on the username suggestion thing already. Thoughts? Can we switch to their installer? No. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Ubuntu 10.10's installer looks rather nice
Shipping 2 different installers is a recipe for disaster from a user and QA perspective.Choose one between Ubiquity, Debian-installer and Anaconda. We only ship one installer, and that is anaconda. I suppose you could argue over whether livecd is its own thing or not, but that's a nitpicky detail. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: vesa-mode Anaconda install
Perhaps having a simple vesa arg to anaconda to force a vesa Xserver would provide a quick and simple work-around. It seems like this might be a simple hack to add to anaconda. A short-hand for xdriver=vesa Why do we need a shorthand for an argument you should only have to type once? xdriver= is a more generic mechanism anyway. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [HEADS-UP] systemd for F14 - the next steps
Hmm, I wasn't aware that Anaconda even asks a question about the
runlevel. Given that I am too lazy to try this out now, what exactly is
this question? i.e. does it ask Are you installing a server or a
deskop? or what does it ask?
The default runlevel is inferred based upon packages installed and
method of installation:
if ts.dbMatch('provides', 'service(graphical-login)').count() and \
ts.dbMatch('provides', 'xorg-x11-server-Xorg').count() and \
anaconda.displayMode == 'g' and not flags.usevnc:
anaconda.desktop.setDefaultRunLevel(5)
Asking a question like this of the user would be kind of absurd.
- Chris
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Re: suggestion: rescue boot extension
Rescue environment aside, it'd be nice to avoid failing the upgrade because of insufficient space in /boot. I think 200 MB default /boot prove to be too small---perhaps 500 MB should be the new default? Of course, it already is: http://git.fedoraproject.org/git/?p=anaconda.git;a=commit;h=3ebabfdcd9c5a61bf8afe57a7ae1e75ad6889b30 - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: PackageKit need to be more intelligent!
users do not need to find devel packages from the PackageKit GUI, we need to search useful packages from here, that is my opinion... This line of thinking needs to stop. Developers are users, too, and development packages ending up in the search results is not such a bad thing. Those packages *are* useful to people, just not the people you have in mind. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?
Would it be possible to put spin kickstarts on the common install DVD, with an option in anaconda to choose them (and notes that network access may be required for some packages)? This would give an easier way to install alternate spins, without having to download and burn lots of CDs, boot, and then transfer to the hard drive. We talked about something along these lines at the last FUDCon, but other pressures have ensured I've had no time to spend working on it. I'd still like to, or at least sit down and type up what we hashed out so other people can take a stab at it. - Chris -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
