Feature idea: package an installer image as a grub entry before F8. Was [ Re: Very much packages with fc6 tag instead of fc7 in the FC7 tree ]

[Colin Walters]

On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 13:37 -0400, Will Woods wrote:

> Start "live-updater" tool
>   - Checks installed packages, as anaconda does
>   - Downloads all updated packages 
>     - (Alternately: use a DVD iso and it would only 

I wouldn't even make it a tool you manually start - integrate into the
pirut update mode so when the next version of Fedora comes out, you get
a notification and it offers to start downloading it in the background.
(I also think pirut should be downloading regular updates in the
background instead of a window)

> download the packages you're missing.)
>   - Grab kernel/initrd (from mirror or DVD iso)
>   - update grub.conf, adding special flag(s) for anaconda
> Reboot into anaconda
>   - Upgrade filesystems, perform other fixups that require unmounted fs
>   - Mount target filesystem label
>   - Upgrade using previously-downloaded packages / iso image
> 
> The downside is that it requires a few gigs of free drive space, 

A few gigs?  Couldn't we download just a CD size image?  I think it's
kind of silly that Fedora makes DVD images so prominent in the download
page - who actually wants to download *everything*?  I know I sure don't
want GNOME+KDE+XFCE for example.  The live CD images are much nicer.
Now, handing out DVDs works well at conferences or between friends, but
I think these are a pretty small percentage of the way Fedora is
distributed.

Also if someone picks this up, I would try hard to make it something
scriptable so a regression tester can try periodic upgrades during the
development process and see how they go.  (Recently become a fan of
writing tests as early as possible again =))