[Fedora-livecd-list] [PATCH] -fs.py-kickstart.py-chages-for-mulit-partitions

[Jeremy Katz]

David Huff wrote:
> Jeremy Katz wrote:
> | Jeremy Katz wrote:
> |> This I'm still not sure that I really want to be carrying in
> |> imgcreate.    There's already a lot of overlap functionality-wise with
> |> anaconda and I know that as soon as we start down this path, we'll end
> |> up having to add all the other crud for various more "advanced"
> |> partitioning things (especially LVM and dm-crypt).  Maintaining one
> |> copy of that kind of code is enough for me ;-)
> |>
> |> I'd be okay with adding the kickstart hunk, though.  And then there's
> |> really not any big reason that I can see why you couldn't just have
> |> the PartitionedDisk bits just in your caller rather than having them a
> |> part of the main imgcreate API
> |
> | ... although I would still strongly ask the question of looking at what
> | you're doing and seeing if it makes sense to build your images by
> | actually going through an install (in a VM of some sort) rather than
> | using imgcreate once you get to the point of needing partitions, etc
> 
> Partitions are needed for mainly two reasons.  The most important reason
> is that it allows the use of grub.  This makes any image created with
> this tool bootable and it looks and feels like any bare metal system.
> It also allows for the ability of creating multiple partitions so an
> appliance can have a septate data partition(s).  This allows for
> flexibility in your update/data model, where if you want to, you can
> switch out your "appliance engine" and keep the data intact.

Oh, I can fully see why partitions are useful for a variety of cases...

> The ability for a tool to create these partitioned disk images via the
> command like, livecd-creator, is very helpful in reproducing known state
> appliances, epically with the rising use of visualization.  Going
> through a actual install in a vm limits you to VM container, xen, kvm,
> vmware and adds extra overhead of building on a machine with extra virt
> resources.  

Reproducing known state should work just as well with a kickstart config 
and doing an install via, eg, virt-install.  Yes, it adds overhead, but 
there are also advantages in functionality and it also means *not* 
maintaining this sort of code in multiple places.  And that's a pretty 
big win as partitioning code is not in the least bit trivial. 
Especially as you start trying to handle more and more of the cases.

 > We have also noticed that an image that was installed via
 > anaconda is larger that an image created with the appliance creator 
tools.

There shouldn't be any difference to speak of here.  Take a look at the 
package sets and see if there's anything, but I wouldn't expect this at 
all.  And if so, it's likely more due to bugs in imgcreate than anything 
else

Jeremy