Re: BIOS boot - an alternative approach
On 2022-04-18 18:25, Ian Pilcher wrote:
...
Basically, I suggest that Fedora stop worrying about BIOS boot or other
"weird" boot configurations. Instead, provide a truly manual
installation path where all boot and storage configuration is the
responsibility of the user.
...
I am using Fedora in the way very close to your suggestion, except the
installer part. Since I am producing bunch of os instances of all types
regularly (for me and my users), many years ago, I replaced
Anaconda/kickstarts with ansible inventory per site (pure-man CMDB)
abusing the ansible groups inheritance as tool for quick instance
description. On top of these inventory calculations I have few stupid
playbooks:
* efi/legacy-pxeboot, lio-iscsi lease: optional, needed when the machine
being installed is physical and blank (no ssh)
* disk-layout: gpt (sfdisk), mdraids, lvm groups/pools/volumes (direct
commands, build in ansible modules are incomplete), mkfs/mkswap
invocations.
* base fedora-image: systemd-nspawn+dnf (package list as sum of the
classes in which the instance belongs),
systemd.mount/swap/netdev/network, locale, etc.
* efi-boot/bios-boot (extlinux/pxelinux based in both cases): initial
copy of the kernal/initramfs, extlinux --install, initial
extlinux.conf - it is simple.
Then with the live (ssh accessible) freshly baked image - the usual
ansible setup (subsystems, users, user profiles), according the
instance purpose. When the new instance is a "upgrade", merge and
restore configuration overlay from previous system using fossil VCS at
/. On kernel updates, stupid python script in /etc/kernel/install.d/ for
keeping extlinux.conf in sync. Nowadays the extlinux.conf script is
superfluous - extlinux config could be generated on the fly form
systemd's /boot/loader/entries/ with a Lua script (syslinux have Lua
module), but I don't have written it yet.
So, not much drama, for the sites with a some techy guy around, there is
no shortage of variants (for both legacies support and efficient setup
methods). The really hard problem which Anaconda is supposed to solve,
are the new, non-tech users - somewhere in the Internet, alone, guided
by incomplete/wrong recipes, found on a random forum/blog by google :-).
Kind regards,
Alek