Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Feature rejected. That combined with the potential of unionfs making this rebootless LiveOS installer not work in F13+, leads me to not be able to personally justify engaging in the process required to bring this package into the repos myself. If someone would like to adopt this package, I would be a very responsive upstream. Also, I do think it was lame that people wasted time bringing up criticisms in the fesco meeting, instead of here, or on the feature talk page. Just as much because it seemed to make a long meeting unnecessarily longer, in addition to my preference for having a better forum than IRC to address criticisms. peace... -dmc Douglas McClendon wrote: Fedorans, Can you spare 50 or 100K? If you can spare 100K/700M in the forthcoming Fedora-12 LiveCD, I can provide you with a rebootless installation experience. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RebootlessInstaller The short story is that you boot the LiveCD/USB, run the installation, and then, instead of rebooting into the installed OS, you are already looking at and using it. I just threw together a decent first pass at a feature page, with all the relevent info, as well as a couple links to youtube videos showing the complete user experience. Or, if you are the adventurous kind with an idle test system (obviously with no important unbacked up data), simply a) boot an f11-i686 livecd or usb, with an internet connection b) firefox http://viros.org/rebootless c) click the i386 rpm link, and submit to packagekit d) do any partitioning beforehand with fdisk, or whatever gui tool (is palimpsest really supposed to be able to repartition?) e) launch the new desktop icon f) run the installer, simply selecting target root/boot/swap partitions g) enjoy the coolness that is rebootless installation, and my gratitude for being one of the first, if not the second tester :) I would obviously love to see this in F12 even though it could use quite a bit of polish. It is fairly important that it go in sooner rather than later, as when unionfs percolates to fedora, this feature may no longer be technically possible. In the event the feature were wildly popular, and sticks around, obviously integration with anaconda would be next, i.e. simply a checkbox before beginning installation stating whether you want rebootless instead of traditional. In any event, I'd love to hear what people think. I suppose if space is the issue, it could even be a feature just getting the package into the fedora repos so that it could be advertised, with users just needing an internet connection, and not having to see a complaint about lack of signature on the package. But cmon, can you spare 100K? (50 of that is ego/logo I can probably part with :) peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 07/18/2009 12:20 AM, Douglas McClendon wrote: Also, I do think it was lame that people wasted time bringing up criticisms in the fesco meeting, instead of here, or on the feature talk page. Just as much because it seemed to make a long meeting unnecessarily longer, in addition to my preference for having a better forum than IRC to address criticisms. Yes, this has been a common trait for a long time and despite similar comments continue to happen quite often. Unfortunate. Rahul -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Colin Walters wrote: Wait, so it's persisting any changes you made to the target drive? That sounds quite cool actually, and I misunderstood the original post. Concretely with your change, if I've connected to a wireless network with NetworkManager, that would get saved in the target drive's configuration in gconf and be there next time I boot? I know with the live images one problem we have is that data can sort of randomly disappear if you're running close to the memory limit; if we go with your architecture we should probably special-case things like ~/.gconf so say the Firefox http disk cache doesn't blow away your wireless config. To help clarify the feature, let me try to clarify this last point of yours even more. What you are saying is orthogonal to the new feature. I.e. the fact that if you have been using a booted LiveOS long enough for the in-ram rootfs overlay to fill up, that Bad Things Happen (tm). Actually, there is no current or future case where a firefox http disk cache would blow away your wireless config. What would happen, is that the firefox cache would simply cause the system to run out of ram (space in the rootfs overlay), and subsequently everything would just start failing badly. I.e. it is not as you say that things randomly disappear, it is that attempts to write to the rootfs just start failing (in a way that confuses the OS even more than if the same thing happened due to 100% rootfs capacity). So to mitigate this, you do things by making a firefox cache smaller. But now, the important clarification to how this pertains to the zyx-liveinstaller: If you complete installation before falling off of this cliff, there is no subsequent danger of hitting this problem. The instant that the installation completes, all the ram or usbdisk that had been used for the rootfs overlay is released/unbound, and subsequently you are just dealing with your installed rootfs on disk like normal. (before even rebooting the first time...) Hope that makes sense. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Fedorans, Can you spare 50 or 100K? If you can spare 100K/700M in the forthcoming Fedora-12 LiveCD, I can provide you with a rebootless installation experience. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RebootlessInstaller The short story is that you boot the LiveCD/USB, run the installation, and then, instead of rebooting into the installed OS, you are already looking at and using it. I just threw together a decent first pass at a feature page, with all the relevent info, as well as a couple links to youtube videos showing the complete user experience. Or, if you are the adventurous kind with an idle test system (obviously with no important unbacked up data), simply a) boot an f11-i686 livecd or usb, with an internet connection b) firefox http://viros.org/rebootless c) click the i386 rpm link, and submit to packagekit d) do any partitioning beforehand with fdisk, or whatever gui tool (is palimpsest really supposed to be able to repartition?) e) launch the new desktop icon f) run the installer, simply selecting target root/boot/swap partitions g) enjoy the coolness that is rebootless installation, and my gratitude for being one of the first, if not the second tester :) I would obviously love to see this in F12 even though it could use quite a bit of polish. It is fairly important that it go in sooner rather than later, as when unionfs percolates to fedora, this feature may no longer be technically possible. In the event the feature were wildly popular, and sticks around, obviously integration with anaconda would be next, i.e. simply a checkbox before beginning installation stating whether you want rebootless instead of traditional. In any event, I'd love to hear what people think. I suppose if space is the issue, it could even be a feature just getting the package into the fedora repos so that it could be advertised, with users just needing an internet connection, and not having to see a complaint about lack of signature on the package. But cmon, can you spare 100K? (50 of that is ego/logo I can probably part with :) peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 14.07.2009 10:04, Douglas McClendon wrote: [...]In any event, I'd love to hear what people think. [...] I for one think rebooting after install is a very good thing, as only a full reboot makes sure the install (including boot loaders) was completely successful and works fine. Or IOW: I for one would be really annoyed if I'm doing a rebootless install and after hours of customizing and using it notice after a reboot that the install doesn't boot due to a broken boot-loader installation/configuration. Just my 2 cent. CU knurd -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Thorsten Leemhuis wrote: On 14.07.2009 10:04, Douglas McClendon wrote: [...]In any event, I'd love to hear what people think. [...] I for one think rebooting after install is a very good thing, as only a full reboot makes sure the install (including boot loaders) was completely successful and works fine. Also, one possible way to potentially mitigate this danger with yet another device mapper trick would be to- After installation, create a snapshot of the system disk(s), then boot them headlessly under qemu in some way that you could tickle them into proving that the bootloader worked (perhaps an init script that detects this type of test qemu run, and provides some output than can be caught). -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 02:04 -0600, Douglas McClendon wrote: Can you spare 50 or 100K? If you can spare 100K/700M in the forthcoming Fedora-12 LiveCD, I can provide you with a rebootless installation experience. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RebootlessInstaller The short story is that you boot the LiveCD/USB, run the installation, and then, instead of rebooting into the installed OS, you are already looking at and using it. I think this needs a lot more discussion before it's considered. As others have said, rebooting is often necessary with our current modus operandi and whether we like it or not, it is consistent. Besides, most people don't mind an *expected* reboot after they do a major upgrade. Me, I normally set aside a weekend for Fedora major upgrades anyway. It's not something I'm inclined to do without some planned downtime, since the last two times I've had an hour of fixing to do afterward. Jon. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Jon Masters wrote: On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 02:04 -0600, Douglas McClendon wrote: Can you spare 50 or 100K? If you can spare 100K/700M in the forthcoming Fedora-12 LiveCD, I can provide you with a rebootless installation experience. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RebootlessInstaller The short story is that you boot the LiveCD/USB, run the installation, and then, instead of rebooting into the installed OS, you are already looking at and using it. I think this needs a lot more discussion before it's considered. As others have said, rebooting is often necessary with our current modus operandi and whether we like it or not, it is consistent. Besides, most people don't mind an *expected* reboot after they do a major upgrade. I quite agree that more discussion is needed as it is considered. But my own biased opinion is that several days to a week and a half of flushing out issues here and on the feature talk page, should be sufficient to provide fesco members with enough confidence to approve this feature. Again, I emphasize that this is in a way akin to putting ext4 in f10. It was there, but a default user experience wouldn't touch the code. I think there is a justifiable place in fedora 12 for this experimental technology. Please elaborate on the necessary reboots that are part of the 'current modus operandi'. I can think of a few things, but nothing that would cause me concern that the feature would have any significant detrimental impact on the reception of and satisfaction with F12. I personally think the feature if advertised similarly to one which could lead to data corruption on the root filesystem (e.g. ext4 in f10), that it could overall be appreciated by some users, and be good press at the same time, IMNSHO... But absolutely, before fesco considers this, I do want all the potential gotchas and risks to be thoroughly vetted. I don't however think at all that the risks are such that this is too late a time to seriously propose this for F12. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 2009/07/14 02:04 (GMT-0600) Douglas McClendon composed: [snip] http://viros.org/rebootless Doesn't kexec, which does a BIOS bypassing reboot, accomplish what you want? OpenSUSE's installer has had kexec_reboot=1 by default for a version or two (I think default started with 11.1): http://en.opensuse.org/Kexec http://en.opensuse.org/Linuxrc -- No Jesus - No peace , Know Jesus - Know Peace Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Felix Miata wrote: On 2009/07/14 02:04 (GMT-0600) Douglas McClendon composed: [snip] http://viros.org/rebootless Doesn't kexec, which does a BIOS bypassing reboot, accomplish what you want? OpenSUSE's installer has had kexec_reboot=1 by default for a version or two (I think default started with 11.1): http://en.opensuse.org/Kexec http://en.opensuse.org/Linuxrc No, from a user experience perspective, a kexec 'warm' reboot is still a reboot. There is AFAIK no user experience example to look to in comparison. Perhaps somewhere along the line people tried pivot_roots after installation, but short of this devicemapper trick, there was always the trouble that tied up file descriptors would prevent you from being able to eject the livecd. I could be wrong about that, or my interpretation of what kexec does (I've read about it often in LWN, but never knowingly used it). Your first link seems currently broken (database error), and the second doesn't really lead me to believe it is anything equivalent. I haven't used *suse that much recently so I can't be sure- Is it perhaps something where they have a very minimal partial installation, then start writing the minimal stuff to disk, kexec-reboot, and then set you up in system that is finishing installing while you use it? If so, one way to describe the major benefit of my rebootless installer, is that you get to boot the livecd/usb environment, *then use it as such*, and at your option, desire, and convenience, decide to permanently install the LiveOS you have just been using and configuring, to disk. And of course when done, just pop out the livecd/usb, and your are done... and free to leave your system with a continuingly increasing uptime :) peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Hi, although (as others pointed out) a reboot may be necessary one way or the other, my opinion would be: Why not? Currently you are *forced* to reboot which now seems not to be a must have. So why not remove that force and allow the user to decide when to reboot? (Maybe one would like to install all available updates before he has to reboot *again* because kernel updates or stuff). So before any flaming starts: Please keep in mind that no one wants to *remove* reboot. ;) my 2ct christoph signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Christoph Höger wrote: Hi, although (as others pointed out) a reboot may be necessary one way or the other, my opinion would be: Why not? Currently you are *forced* to reboot which now seems not to be a must have. Thanks for the feedback. Glad to see somebody else can see the added value that doesn't obviously (to me) imply any negative consequence (except for the 100kb/700M space on the LiveCD). To respond to Rahul's response, I think you have it right. Currently, when doing an install of Fedora 11, without my installer, the user is 'forced' to reboot in order to start 'really' using the newly installed system. (see next paragraph for '' explanation) So why not remove that force and allow the user to decide when to reboot? (Maybe one would like to install all available updates before he has to reboot *again* because kernel updates or stuff). But to demonstrate a lack of bias, I will mention that you are currently able to do something like a chroot'd yum update on the installed system without rebooting, without my installer. But this also highlights the benefit- it's a lot more trivial and intuitive to update your system if it is the one running in front of you, than if it is one you have to mount and chroot, and probably even throw in some bindmounts to manage. So before any flaming starts: Please keep in mind that no one wants to *remove* reboot. ;) ;) peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Another thing to keep in mind that immediately post-installation there are going to be updates, which will at a minimum need desktop reset (fast reboot experience), or more likely system restart. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Colin Walters wrote: On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 4:04 AM, Douglas McClendondmc.fed...@filteredperception.org wrote: i.e. simply a checkbox before beginning installation stating whether you want rebootless instead of traditional. I don't think the installation process needs more questions. Also, off by default means it won't get testing and will eventually bitrot. I think we would only ever consider adding a checkbox (not a question) to anaconda, if the initial reception of the feature in, e.g. F12, was so positive that it justified it without requiring any advocacy on my part. It's unclear to me what your plan is for handling firstboot, which is a critical part of the OS setup. Now, we should probably move most of the current firstboot questions into anaconda. At a minimum, it'd be useful to ask them when you'd otherwise be staring at the image copying progress bar. I'll try to add this to the wiki. My intention was to start with the minimum possible for the first experimental release (f12, alpha freeze in 3 weeks). With the feature accepted, and me currently being unemployed, the minimum possible might actually be quite a bit though. My answer of course is the same as what you mentioned, they go into the installer. Honestly a create user, change rootpw, and similar complexity pages are not that difficult to add. It is also quite acceptable to move anything that can be done as 'regular system maintenance and reconfiguration' out of the installer. The whole philosophy of a LiveOS is that you boot in the most generic agnostic way possible, and let the user configure at runtime. I.e. it's actually a really good thing IMO to force the user to say use system-config-time or whatever to change the timezone. I know too many examples from personal experience, dating back to the days when you couldn't easily tab out system-config- how much of a pain it was to learn how to administer things that were done in the installer. Another issue that occurs to me is that the livecd user, besides not matching the target username, also has no password (and I believe won't have an encrypted gnome keyring), but this is different from the expected target installation. My long term ideal vision for this, would be to have gdm login accept an arbitrary user/pass instead of the autologin of liveuser, then that user/pass would be the initial user. Obviously with an option at install time to disable the mode subsequently, probably default on. Though possibly left off for people who want a very guest permissive system. For now, a simple addition to my installer already in my ROADMAP is a checkbox in the installer 'delete liveuser account upon logout'. So this looks technically cool, but there are a lot of problems to investigate and solve that it brings up. Thanks for the positive feedback, and I do agree. In response to some of the prior feedback, I already adjusted the wiki release notes to emphasize the experimental status. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Colin Walters wrote: Another thing to keep in mind that immediately post-installation there are going to be updates, which will at a minimum need desktop reset (fast reboot experience), or more likely system restart. I don't exactly get this. I might understand some negligible things. But historically I've often done -normal install, reboot -booted, logged in using everying, then a massive yum update, then I'd wait till it was absolutely convenient to logout of the desktop or reboot In fact, when I felt I needed to do it before my convenience, I generally regarded it as a pretty horrible bug. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 02:04 -0600, Douglas McClendon wrote:
Fedorans,
Can you spare 50 or 100K? If you can spare 100K/700M in the forthcoming
Fedora-12 LiveCD, I can provide you with a rebootless installation
experience.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RebootlessInstaller
The short story is that you boot the LiveCD/USB, run the installation,
and then, instead of rebooting into the installed OS, you are already
looking at and using it.
snip
Hi Doug,
I think this is an interesting idea and I don't see why you it should
not be done (if you are willing to do the work). It would also IMHO be a
cool killing feature (from marketing POV) ;-) My idea of how this would
be implemented best is:
1. do the installation
2. on the last page instead of plain thank you for installing and
exit (I don't recall what exactly is on the last anaconda page) would
be thank you for installing and start using the installed system
now, continue using {Desktop, KDE, ...} Live and reboot buttons.
If you pushed the start using the installed system now you'd start
using the system from hdd and the live CD/DVD would be ejected. Also it
would be probably good idea to pop-up a notification icon that suggests
reboot (like package-kit does for e.g. kernel updates).
If you pushed the continue using {Desktop, KDE, ...} Live it would
just quit the installer and suggest reboot in a similar case as before.
If you pushed the reboot one it would quit the installer and forced a
reboot (and perhaps prompted the user to save their work).
Of course it could be made into radiobuttons instead of buttons with
just one Finish or whatever button.
The default would stay continue using {Desktop, KDE, ...} Live.
This would of course work only for Live Spins, I don't see any reason to
try to push this to the standard DVD or network installs.
Also you'd need to properly handle firstboot in this case, which would
be bypassed. Me thinks firstboot should be purged anyway, but it still
exists and you need to be aware of it.
Just my €0.02,
Martin
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Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 2009/07/14 05:38 (GMT-0600) Douglas McClendon composed: Felix Miata wrote: Doesn't kexec, which does a BIOS bypassing reboot, accomplish what you want? OpenSUSE's installer has had kexec_reboot=1 by default for a version or two (I think default started with 11.1): http://en.opensuse.org/Kexec http://en.opensuse.org/Linuxrc ... I could be wrong about that, or my interpretation of what kexec does ... The first URL explains it. Your first link seems currently broken (database error), and the second It worked and works for me. doesn't really lead me to believe it is anything equivalent. The second URL is mainly a list of installer options, and affirms my statement that kexec is now a default option. used *suse that much recently so I can't be sure- Is it perhaps something where they have a very minimal partial installation, then start writing the minimal stuff to disk, kexec-reboot, and then set you up in system that is finishing installing while you use it? If so, one IIRC most rpms, initrd Grub are installed by the initial installer, then kexec prior to most configuration steps by the installer now running on the installed kernel instead of the installation kernel. -- No Jesus - No peace , Know Jesus - Know Peace Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Nobody is forced. You must be misremembering things. Huh? Plain installing worked without reboot? Did not notice that last weekend with f11 i386 dvd. signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Martin Sourada wrote:
On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 02:04 -0600, Douglas McClendon wrote:
Fedorans,
Can you spare 50 or 100K? If you can spare 100K/700M in the forthcoming
Fedora-12 LiveCD, I can provide you with a rebootless installation
experience.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RebootlessInstaller
The short story is that you boot the LiveCD/USB, run the installation,
and then, instead of rebooting into the installed OS, you are already
looking at and using it.
snip
Hi Doug,
I think this is an interesting idea and I don't see why you it should
not be done (if you are willing to do the work). It would also IMHO be a
cool killing feature (from marketing POV) ;-) My idea of how this would
be implemented best is:
Hi Martin, thanks for the great feedback. As you can see from the
project page, I already have a simple/experimental implementation, which
I would like to get accepted more or less as is, perhaps prioritizing
more on functionality for F12 than features. But you brought up some
good ideas...
1. do the installation
2. on the last page instead of plain thank you for installing and
exit (I don't recall what exactly is on the last anaconda page) would
be thank you for installing and start using the installed system
now, continue using {Desktop, KDE, ...} Live and reboot buttons.
That is more or less what I have, or rather, I have a big text widget
with the simplest line of text currently. The text for the intro and
final pages, and other places, I definitely expect to hone based on
feedback like yours. After the feature is accepted, and even before,
I'll gladly accept patches :)
If you pushed the start using the installed system now you'd start
using the system from hdd and the live CD/DVD would be ejected. Also it
would be probably good idea to pop-up a notification icon that suggests
reboot (like package-kit does for e.g. kernel updates).
How about a mention in the intro or success page that mentions the
minimal root-on-lvm performance hit until the next reboot. Other than
that, there is no reason to suggest the reboot. Or rather, just let
packagekit do what packagekit does, and get an updated kernel, and then
give the suggest like normal, for the normal reason?
If you pushed the continue using {Desktop, KDE, ...} Live it would
just quit the installer and suggest reboot in a similar case as before.
If you pushed the reboot one it would quit the installer and forced a
reboot (and perhaps prompted the user to save their work).
Adding an optional reboot button to the success page is certainly a
reasonable idea, fairly trivial to add.
Of course it could be made into radiobuttons instead of buttons with
just one Finish or whatever button.
The default would stay continue using {Desktop, KDE, ...} Live.
This would of course work only for Live Spins, I don't see any reason to
try to push this to the standard DVD or network installs.
I agree, this is definitely a 'LiveOS' thing.
Also you'd need to properly handle firstboot in this case, which would
be bypassed. Me thinks firstboot should be purged anyway, but it still
exists and you need to be aware of it.
There really isn't that much there these days anyway. See my reply to
Colin for a discussion of that.
Thanks again for good design ideas,
peace...
-dmc
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Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 07/14/2009 07:46 PM, Christoph Höger wrote: Nobody is forced. You must be misremembering things. Huh? Plain installing worked without reboot? Did not notice that last weekend with f11 i386 dvd. Live CD installation. You aren't forced to do a reboot. Rahul -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 07/14/2009 08:08 PM, Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 19:05 +0530 schrieb Rahul Sundaram: On 07/14/2009 07:02 PM, Christoph Höger wrote: Hi, although (as others pointed out) a reboot may be necessary one way or the other, my opinion would be: Why not? Currently you are *forced* to reboot which now seems not to be a must have. Nobody is forced. You must be misremembering things. Obviously you are the one misremembering things: http://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/temp/anaconda-last-screen.png We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? You can close the installer then. Rahul -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 20:12 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote: We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? You can close the installer then. Yes, and reboot in order to be able to use the installed system. The suggested feature is, as I understand it, trying to make this reboot optional, i.e. not necessary. There's no need to play with words like forced reboot. It is clearly not directly forced in the Live install, yet still necessary, so someone actually could consider it forced (indirectly)... Rahul Martin signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Rahul Sundaram wrote: On 07/14/2009 08:08 PM, Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 19:05 +0530 schrieb Rahul Sundaram: On 07/14/2009 07:02 PM, Christoph Höger wrote: Hi, although (as others pointed out) a reboot may be necessary one way or the other, my opinion would be: Why not? Currently you are *forced* to reboot which now seems not to be a must have. Nobody is forced. You must be misremembering things. Obviously you are the one misremembering things: http://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/temp/anaconda-last-screen.png We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? You can close the installer then. Rahul, let's stay on topic and not split semantic hairs. We both know you aren't trying to suggest that there is no significant difference between my rebootless installer and the traditional (anaconda) live installer. But your arguing of this point could be interpreted like that out of context. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Paul W. Frields wrote: On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 08:09:09AM -0600, Douglas McClendon wrote: Colin Walters wrote: Another thing to keep in mind that immediately post-installation there are going to be updates, which will at a minimum need desktop reset (fast reboot experience), or more likely system restart. I don't exactly get this. I might understand some negligible things. But historically I've often done -normal install, reboot -booted, logged in using everying, then a massive yum update, then I'd wait till it was absolutely convenient to logout of the desktop or reboot In fact, when I felt I needed to do it before my convenience, I generally regarded it as a pretty horrible bug. I thought that preupgrade is supposed to help ease this discomfort. It deals pretty well with combining the base release of the new distro with package updates, and you reboot when you're ready. There's nothing in preupgrade to deal with repartitioning, though, it's purely for an in-place upgrade. Downloading happens in the background, and you reboot when you're ready to run the transaction. May not cover all the cases you're looking at, but worth noting. Yes, I do see how preupgrade does ease that discomfort. The RebootlessInstaller's use-case is only about installations, not upgrades. Though... (envisioning lots of future work that I'm not that interested in doing myself) peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? You can close the installer then. We were talking about anaconda. And I still don't know a sane (aka no manual chroot) way to go from livecd into the fresh installed environment. You surely agree that users that know about chroot are probably not the ones adressed with the hey, cool, in this linux thingy i do not need to reboot after install feature, don't you? signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 07/14/2009 08:23 PM, Christoph Höger wrote: We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? You can close the installer then. We were talking about anaconda. And I still don't know a sane (aka no manual chroot) way to go from livecd into the fresh installed environment. You surely agree that users that know about chroot are probably not the ones adressed with the hey, cool, in this linux thingy i do not need to reboot after install feature, don't you? I never suggested otherwise but my point is simply that describing the current experience as being forced to reboot doesn't sound appropriate. You are free to continue working on the live environment post installation unlike in regular installations. That is a significant difference, IMO. Rahul -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Christoph Höger wrote: We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? You can close the installer then. We were talking about anaconda. And I still don't know a sane (aka no manual chroot) way to go from livecd into the fresh installed environment. If you look at the feature page and watch 18 minutes of youtube videos, and/or look at my code, I think you'll have to admit there is 'a way' to do it. I certainly won't be offended by the label 'insane' however, unless of course you find technical problems with my implementation, in which case, I still won't mind the label, I'll just go fix em. You surely agree that users that know about chroot are probably not the ones adressed with the hey, cool, in this linux thingy i do not need to reboot after install feature, don't you? Given that I'm precisely the kind of person who is comfortable doing the chroot dance, and I get the most joy from using my installer, I'd have to biasedly suggest that it is for everyone who thinks its kindof cool. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Rahul Sundaram wrote: On 07/14/2009 08:23 PM, Christoph Höger wrote: We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? You can close the installer then. We were talking about anaconda. And I still don't know a sane (aka no manual chroot) way to go from livecd into the fresh installed environment. You surely agree that users that know about chroot are probably not the ones adressed with the hey, cool, in this linux thingy i do not need to reboot after install feature, don't you? I never suggested otherwise but my point is simply that describing the current experience as being forced to reboot doesn't sound appropriate. You are free to continue working on the live environment post installation unlike in regular installations. That is a significant difference, IMO. I agree that is a significant already existing benefit of Fedora's LiveOS. I would just hope you would agree that the leap to not having to deal with the chroot, and just being 'already in your installed system' is as significant a difference as well. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 08:09 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon: Colin Walters wrote: Another thing to keep in mind that immediately post-installation there are going to be updates, which will at a minimum need desktop reset (fast reboot experience), or more likely system restart. I don't exactly get this. I might understand some negligible things. But historically I've often done -normal install, reboot -booted, logged in using everying, then a massive yum update, then I'd wait till it was absolutely convenient to logout of the desktop or reboot You wouldn't need no yum update if you enabled the updates repo during install. It's a single click. Your proposal sounds interesting, but I have two questions/issues: 1. The installation is not finished after reboot because we have firstboot. How to trigger firstboot in a rebootless install? 2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that was installed. Regards, Christoph -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 08:09 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon: Colin Walters wrote: Another thing to keep in mind that immediately post-installation there are going to be updates, which will at a minimum need desktop reset (fast reboot experience), or more likely system restart. I don't exactly get this. I might understand some negligible things. But historically I've often done -normal install, reboot -booted, logged in using everying, then a massive yum update, then I'd wait till it was absolutely convenient to logout of the desktop or reboot You wouldn't need no yum update if you enabled the updates repo during install. It's a single click. I don't know this off the top of my head, but I think I can say with some certainty- either that isn't possible with the current LiveOS installer, or if it is, the same thing is a trivial addition to mine. I.e. in the context of my rebootless installer, it is literally just a checkbox which spawns a yum update, or pokes packagekit to do the same. Your proposal sounds interesting, but I have two questions/issues: 1. The installation is not finished after reboot because we have firstboot. How to trigger firstboot in a rebootless install? firstboot really just isn't that much. It is all stuff that can be done just as easily in the running system. But as mentioned in response to Colin, integrating parts of that in the RebootlessInstaller are already in the ROADMAP. But I don't think that that level of feature parity with existing installations should be required for feature acceptance in f12 (given 'experimental' tagging of the feature). 2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that was installed. As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. (unless the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of install). So yes, if there is a kernel update available - and I'll grant, it is the rule for installations and not the exception - you will need to reboot to switch to that kernel (at least until the whole ksplice technology rolls into town...) peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 20:12 +0530 schrieb Rahul Sundaram: On 07/14/2009 08:08 PM, Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 19:05 +0530 schrieb Rahul Sundaram: On 07/14/2009 07:02 PM, Christoph Höger wrote: Hi, although (as others pointed out) a reboot may be necessary one way or the other, my opinion would be: Why not? Currently you are *forced* to reboot which now seems not to be a must have. Nobody is forced. You must be misremembering things. Obviously you are the one misremembering things: http://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/temp/anaconda-last-screen.png We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? Are we? If I understand the proposal correctly it also includes rebootless switching from the installation DVD into your newly installed system. You can close the installer then. But why would I want that? If somebody installs Fedora, I'm sure he wants to actually use it and not the slow livecd. So the rebootless feature only makes sense if one can switch rebootless to the installed system - from the livecd as well as from the installation DVD. Regards, Christoph -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Douglas McClendon wrote: Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 08:09 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon: 2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that was installed. As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. (unless the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of install). Ok, I'll show my good fedora developer maturity and call it a 'night' now that I'm starting to get sloppy. That should have been worded- As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. Even if the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of the install, you won't be running the updated kernel until after a reboot. ... Same as RebootlessInstaller ... until ksplice ... Thanks everyone for the vetting so far. I'm sure by the time I check back in, I'll have a lot of catching up to do, but that my installer will be all the better in the long run for it. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 20:12 +0530 schrieb Rahul Sundaram: On 07/14/2009 08:08 PM, Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 19:05 +0530 schrieb Rahul Sundaram: On 07/14/2009 07:02 PM, Christoph Höger wrote: Hi, although (as others pointed out) a reboot may be necessary one way or the other, my opinion would be: Why not? Currently you are *forced* to reboot which now seems not to be a must have. Nobody is forced. You must be misremembering things. Obviously you are the one misremembering things: http://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/temp/anaconda-last-screen.png We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? Are we? If I understand the proposal correctly it also includes rebootless switching from the installation DVD into your newly installed system. Ok, one more simple reply- No, this is *just* a LiveOS thing, that has nothing to do with the traditional^2 (non-live) DVD installer. Though one could of course imagine architecting something like that, but that _would_ boil down to more or less the same thing as opensuse appears to be doing with kexec. peace and g'nite... -dmc You can close the installer then. But why would I want that? If somebody installs Fedora, I'm sure he wants to actually use it and not the slow livecd. So the rebootless feature only makes sense if one can switch rebootless to the installed system - from the livecd as well as from the installation DVD. Regards, Christoph -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 07/14/2009 08:53 PM, Christoph Wickert wrote: Are we? If I understand the proposal correctly it also includes rebootless switching from the installation DVD into your newly installed system. You might want to read the proposal again. It specifically talks about only Live installation. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RebootlessInstaller There is nothing in it about a regular installation. You can close the installer then. But why would I want that? If somebody installs Fedora, I'm sure he wants to actually use it and not the slow livecd. I have continued using the Live CD after a installation because it is sometimes convenient to do so. It is not slow since I usually use a Live USB. The flexibility is quite useful. It would be wonderful to get the rebootless feature added as well. Rahul -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 09:00 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon: Christoph Höger wrote: We are talking about a live cd installation, yes? You can close the installer then. We were talking about anaconda. And I still don't know a sane (aka no manual chroot) way to go from livecd into the fresh installed environment. If you look at the feature page and watch 18 minutes of youtube videos, and/or look at my code, I think you'll have to admit there is 'a way' to do it. I certainly won't be offended by the label 'insane' however, unless of course you find technical problems with my implementation, in which case, I still won't mind the label, I'll just go fix em. That was, of course, meant: Except for feature proposals discussed here ;) signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 09:27 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon: Douglas McClendon wrote: Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 08:09 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon: 2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that was installed. As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. (unless the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of install). Ok, I'll show my good fedora developer maturity and call it a 'night' now that I'm starting to get sloppy. That should have been worded- As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. Even if the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of the install, you won't be running the updated kernel until after a reboot. There is no chrooted yum update but the updated packages get installed *instead* of the old ones from the installation media. ... Same as RebootlessInstaller ... until ksplice ... Thanks everyone for the vetting so far. Thanks a lot for the proposal and the work you've put into it. I'm sure we all are interested in it, but many of use are just a little skeptical if it really works out. Please don't let this skepticism scare you. :) Regards, Christoph -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 09:27:08AM -0600, Douglas McClendon wrote: As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. Even if the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of the install, you won't be running the updated kernel until after a reboot. Is it the case that the installation kernel is always UP, whereas the real kernel would probably be SMP nowadays? ... Same as RebootlessInstaller ... until ksplice ... I don't think ksplice changes things -- it seems to only work for very minor kernel patches. For example, any change to the layout of a kernel structure would appear to be incompatible with ksplice. Thus it seems highly unlikely it'll ever work in its current form for arbitrary kernel revisions. quote Before you use ksplice-create on a patch, you should confirm that the desired source code change does not make any semantic changes to kernel data structures--that is, changes that would require existing instances of kernel data structures to be transformed (e.g., a patch that adds a field to a global data structure would require the existing data structures to change). If you use Ksplice on a patch that changes data structure semantics, Ksplice will not detect the problem and you could experience kernel problems as a result. /quote from: http://www.ksplice.com/doc/ksplice-create Rich. -- Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat http://et.redhat.com/~rjones libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting, bindings from many languages. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/ See what it can do: http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/recipes.html -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 11:19 -0400, Colin Walters wrote: There's no such step in the live install (right?).Now, it would likely make sense to have such a mechanism, but it would need design. I forget offhand too how the PackageKit updater works in the live image (do we disable it by default?). With the Anaconda live installer, it's the raw unmodified live filesystem that is copied to the newly partitioned disk(s). Ergo any rpm updating you do on the LiveOS before you start the installer will be lost. It appears that Doglas' installer uses the in use LiveOS so that the changes you make while running the LiveOS before starting the install will be carried over into the install. That in itself seems interesting enough to explore and see if we can't get the same functionality, to some extent into Anaconda. As for rebootless, that's interesting too. I'm glad you were able to demo the technology within your installer, but I'd worry about the duplication of effort/code to have yet another program that is designed to discover disks, partition them appropriately for an install, copy content, then install a boot loader. There is a lot of logic code in Anaconda to get the partitioning correct for an installation, even if the backend code uses system level libraries and tools to accomplish the partitioning. Ditto boot loaders and kernel setup. If we as a project find rebootless installation useful then we should find a way to integrate it with our existing installer and code set which already carries all the logic necessary to pull it off, from years of experience and bug reports. I think your work is great and useful though! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On Tuesday 14 July 2009 11:50:06 Richard W.M. Jones wrote: On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 09:27:08AM -0600, Douglas McClendon wrote: As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. Even if the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of the install, you won't be running the updated kernel until after a reboot. Is it the case that the installation kernel is always UP, whereas the real kernel would probably be SMP nowadays? On everything but ppc32, we don't even ship an UP kernel any longer, the base kernel used by the installer *is* an SMP kernel. ... Same as RebootlessInstaller ... until ksplice ... I don't think ksplice changes things -- it seems to only work for very minor kernel patches. For example, any change to the layout of a kernel structure would appear to be incompatible with ksplice. Thus it seems highly unlikely it'll ever work in its current form for arbitrary kernel revisions. Trying to ksplice from 2.6.29.4 in the installer to say 2.6.30.1 or even to 2.6.31 does sound like massive fail... -- Jarod Wilson ja...@redhat.com -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
2009/7/14 Douglas McClendon dmc.fed...@filteredperception.org: Fedorans, Can you spare 50 or 100K? If you can spare 100K/700M in the forthcoming Fedora-12 LiveCD, I can provide you with a rebootless installation experience. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RebootlessInstaller peace... -dmc Truly great idea, I can finally bypass anaconda thanks. ...dex -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On 07/14/2009 11:04 AM, Christoph Wickert wrote: 2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that was installed. Would it be feasible to fetch the current kernel from the 'net (if possible/permitted) and kexec into it before proceeding with the install? With liveUSB there's persistence, but is there a way to have a ramdisk survive kexec for liveCD? Heck, fetch the latest anaconda too, and get rid of some of the zero-day problems we have that require respins now. -Bill -- Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Cell: 603.252.2606 Twitter, etc.: bill_mcgonigle Page: 603.442.1833 Email, IM, VOIP: b...@bfccomputing.com Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/ VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 7:38 AM, Douglas McClendondmc.fed...@filteredperception.org wrote: No, from a user experience perspective, a kexec 'warm' reboot is still a reboot. I could be wrong about that, or my interpretation of what kexec does (I've read about it often in LWN, but never knowingly used it). That's correct I believe, yes. If so, one way to describe the major benefit of my rebootless installer, is that you get to boot the livecd/usb environment, *then use it as such*, and at your option, desire, and convenience, decide to permanently install the LiveOS you have just been using and configuring, to disk. And of course when done, just pop out the livecd/usb, and your are done... and free to leave your system with a continuingly increasing uptime :) Wait, so it's persisting any changes you made to the target drive? That sounds quite cool actually, and I misunderstood the original post. Concretely with your change, if I've connected to a wireless network with NetworkManager, that would get saved in the target drive's configuration in gconf and be there next time I boot? I know with the live images one problem we have is that data can sort of randomly disappear if you're running close to the memory limit; if we go with your architecture we should probably special-case things like ~/.gconf so say the Firefox http disk cache doesn't blow away your wireless config. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 09:27 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon: Douglas McClendon wrote: Christoph Wickert wrote: Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 08:09 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon: 2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that was installed. As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. (unless the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of install). Ok, I'll show my good fedora developer maturity and call it a 'night' now that I'm starting to get sloppy. That should have been worded- As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is the running kernel. Even if the f11 installer already allows you to trigger a chrooted yum update as part of the install, you won't be running the updated kernel until after a reboot. There is no chrooted yum update but the updated packages get installed *instead* of the old ones from the installation media. I believe you are speaking of the most traditional (DVD) installer, and not the LiveOS/CD/USB installer. I just added the following to the feature wiki- clarification note: This is only an alternate method to the current LiveOS installer. This method does not provide any interesting alternative to the old school non-live DVD installer. Though it does provide an alternative for DVD-sized LiveOS spin's installers. This architecture could provide a rebootless equivalent to what it sounds like opensuse achieves with kexec, but that is just an idea with no proof of concept yet, unrelated to this feature. Nor does this feature pertain in any way to upgrade scenarios, just as the current Fedora LiveOS installer does not (I believe) support any kind of upgrade. (I believe vanilla anaconda may be usable to perform upgrades from the current LiveCD, but that is not a use-case that is well documented/advertised. Wiki editors, please confirm/deny) Thanks everyone for the vetting so far. Thanks a lot for the proposal and the work you've put into it. I'm sure we all are interested in it, but many of use are just a little skeptical if it really works out. Please don't let this skepticism scare you. :) No need to worry, I've been around the fedora-devel block once or twice before. The technique/technology here I first published as a bash script on this list a couple years ago. I think what is sinking in is that people need GUIs and lots of clear documentation in order to mitigate their skepticism. It's getting there... Thanks, -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Bill McGonigle wrote: On 07/14/2009 11:04 AM, Christoph Wickert wrote: 2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that was installed. Would it be feasible to fetch the current kernel from the 'net (if possible/permitted) and kexec into it before proceeding with the install? Short answer- Yes. Though mainly for systems with 1+G ram and/or usb persistence, because a kernel and anaconda upgrade will take a healthy chunk of space in the overlay. I do like this idea, for instance, as an optional bootloader choice. The key thing though, is this would have to happen, _at boot up_. I.e. to get the kexec out of the way before the user dives into things. Otherwise the user has to see a kexec reboot, which while skipping the BIOS, is still a 'reboot experience'. But this is not at all within the scope of the currently proposed feature. With liveUSB there's persistence, but is there a way to have a ramdisk survive kexec for liveCD? Hmm... Short answer- I don't know. If not now, it's probably just a kexec kernel feature enhancement away to find a way to protect some arbitrary hunk of ram during kexec. Heck, fetch the latest anaconda too, and get rid of some of the zero-day problems we have that require respins now. Yes, as above, I agree that would be a pretty cool feature (again, beyond the scope of the one currently being discussed). peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer
Colin Walters wrote: On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 7:38 AM, Douglas McClendondmc.fed...@filteredperception.org wrote: If so, one way to describe the major benefit of my rebootless installer, is that you get to boot the livecd/usb environment, *then use it as such*, and at your option, desire, and convenience, decide to permanently install the LiveOS you have just been using and configuring, to disk. And of course when done, just pop out the livecd/usb, and your are done... and free to leave your system with a continuingly increasing uptime :) Wait, so it's persisting any changes you made to the target drive? yup. That sounds quite cool actually, and I misunderstood the original post. Concretely with your change, if I've connected to a wireless network with NetworkManager, that would get saved in the target drive's configuration in gconf and be there next time I boot? yup. I know with the live images one problem we have is that data can sort of randomly disappear if you're running close to the memory limit; if yes, and this is one motivation to possibly switch to a unionfs LiveOS architecture, which would preclude my feature from working. Note that unionfs doesn't magically defeat this problem, it just suffers differently. I.e. a different set (but similar kind) of tradeoffs, that clearly the ubuntu and lots of other folks think is better (maybe not by a lot, but by enough). In any event, the current feature proposal does not address this (though I've suggested other ideas on fedora-livecd-list over the years on ways to mitigate the pain). Really, the coolest way to mitigate the pain, would be if you could pass a boot cmdline flag to the kernel, such that ext3/4 would have a preference for block(?) allocation, i.e. always preferring blocks that have been used and freed, instead of blocks that had never been used. If that could be done, that would go _a long_ way in mitigating the pain of the devicemapper LiveOS architecture. But I'm getting off track of the feature under consideration... we go with your architecture we should probably special-case things like ~/.gconf so say the Firefox http disk cache doesn't blow away your wireless config. Uh... yes. And if I understand you correctly, that is not limited to my new feature, and should just be done period, because it helps out just as much for normal LiveOS usage. It would just have to be another one those things done in /etc/rc.d/init.d/livesys that my installer would have to undo at the end of installation. peace... -dmc -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
