Aricle idea

Hello.
I have an idea. The article is about how to start Fedora installation
process from GRUB. 
Let's suppose that you don't have physical access to a remote host and
you have to reinstall the operating system. Or let's suppose that you
have some sort of VPS and the cloud provider doesn't offer a Fedora
image. In the latter case, some providers offer the possibility to
upload and use a custom image (raw or qcow) and some others allow you
to install the operating system from a mounted ISO. In the other hand
some other providers doesn't allow you to choose an operating system
outside the provided ones, so you can't run Fedora.

I tested it on a couple of cloud providers, as well as using virt-
manager, and it works.
In short words, once provisioned the VM (running for instance CentOS)
you have to add a new menu entry in GRUB and, as documented in the
Anaconda docs, pass some options to the Compressed Linux kernel
Executable (vmlinuz) in order to start the installation process from
the network.

However I don't know if it is suitable for the Magazine or if it is
only a dirty and risky hack.

Ciao,
A.

[Paul Frields]

I'd love some opinion from people familiar with cloud usage of Fedora.
But the idea seems sound to me. The concept seems similar to how we do
PXE based installs, so I don't see why it would be thought of as dirty
or risky.

Paul

On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 6:13 PM  wrote:
> Hello.
> I have an idea. The article is about how to start Fedora installation
> process from GRUB.
> Let's suppose that you don't have physical access to a remote host and
> you have to reinstall the operating system. Or let's suppose that you
> have some sort of VPS and the cloud provider doesn't offer a Fedora
> image. In the latter case, some providers offer the possibility to
> upload and use a custom image (raw or qcow) and some others allow you
> to install the operating system from a mounted ISO. In the other hand
> some other providers doesn't allow you to choose an operating system
> outside the provided ones, so you can't run Fedora.
>
> I tested it on a couple of cloud providers, as well as using virt-
> manager, and it works.
> In short words, once provisioned the VM (running for instance CentOS)
> you have to add a new menu entry in GRUB and, as documented in the
> Anaconda docs, pass some options to the Compressed Linux kernel
> Executable (vmlinuz) in order to start the installation process from
> the network.
>
> However I don't know if it is suitable for the Magazine or if it is
> only a dirty and risky hack.
>
> Ciao,
> A.
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On Wed, 2019-02-13 at 07:52 -0500, Paul Frields wrote:
> I'd love some opinion from people familiar with cloud usage of
> Fedora.
> But the idea seems sound to me. The concept seems similar to how we
> do
> PXE based installs, so I don't see why it would be thought of as
> dirty
> or risky.

Yes, the steps are similar to PXE, so thecnically is licit.
I mean risky because, if something goes wrong you have to reprovision
your VM, and in addition I don't know if the various providers pose
some limitations (that at the moment I'm not aware of) on what you can
do with the cloud instance (aka VPS), maybe if you install something
that is not supported, or if you install a system outside the provided
images, you break some policy or term of use.

Thanks,
A.

On Wed, 2019-02-13 at 07:52 -0500, Paul Frields wrote:
> I'd love some opinion from people familiar with cloud usage of
> Fedora.
> But the idea seems sound to me. The concept seems similar to how we
> do
> PXE based installs, so I don't see why it would be thought of as
> dirty
> or risky.

Hello.
In any case I wrote a draft
https://fedoramagazine.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=25356&action=edit

Let me know if it could be suitable for the magazine.

Thanks,
A.