Pipe dreams: yum-based anaconda a step towards on-line yum-based upgrades?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le mercredi 30 novembre 2005 à 16:32 -0500, Peter Jones a écrit :
> On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 22:13 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> 
> > > it's called anaconda
> > 
> > Nah
> > Anaconda requires you to get an installation image somewhere and burn it
> > to a CD/DVD. A firstboot package would just add an entry to the usual
> > boot menu, and work even on a CD-less system. Plus a firstboot could be
> > split into "manage partitions" "manage lvms" ... tools, while anaconda
> > only knows about update process.
> 
> That's called a "rescue" image.
> 
> So what you're saying is you'd like either anaconda to also be a rescue
> image, or the rescue image to also do upgrades.

What I'm saying is the various anaconda operations could be modularized
into separate tools, which could then be assembled in the current
install CD, the rescue CD, normal distribution tools (for stuff that can
be run on a live system), or bootloader-access tools (for stuff which
can not be safely run on a live system).

And then a full release upgrade would just be 
1. update packages via yum
2. the new fedora-release file depends on one or several firstboot
packages, which are therefore installed during the yum upgrade
3. on installation these packages create a "distro upgrade" bootloader
entry, make it default and ask to reboot
4. user reboots on this entry and the actions which can not be done on a
live system are performed.

No burn new iso stage, no need for a cd drive, upgrade steps are
performed whenever the associated packages are available in the repo not
when an installation iso has been created, general purpose tools (lvm
management, partition management, whatever) can be accessed at any time
just by rebooting on the right bootloader entry or executing the right
command on the system. Cold boot ramdisk can be assembled using the
current system keyboard and X11 settings, removing the need for the dumb
anaconda probing.

Of course if the system is completely hosed you'll need to go back to
the install stage, but that should be the exception not the norm.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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