Re: a special Fedora spin
Hi,
sorry for writing under a different mail, but I did not have Fedora
account before.
So do I understand it right that if we have our spin ready, we can start
the standard spin enrollment process and mention there that we want also
disk images generated?
Thank you,
Vojta
Dne 05. 02. 20 v 10:04 Peter Robinson napsal(a):
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 6:40 PM Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com> wrote:
>> Hi Vojtech,
>>
>> I don't have an answer for your questions, so I have copied the
>> Release Engineering team who can give you the answers you need. I love
>> this spin idea, and am happy to help in whatever way I can.
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> BC
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 11:59 AM Vojtech Polasek <vpolasek(a)redhat.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Hello Ben,
>>>
>>> my name is Vojta and I am a blind software engineer working for RH in
>>> Brno, Czech Republic. I am working in platform security, but this is not
>>> that important for this mail.
>>>
>>> Me and several other friends from RH are working on a special Linux
>>> distribution for blind and visually impaired users. This distribution is
>>> currently based on Fedora. We would like to make a spin from it. But I
>>> have a special question, see below.
>>>
>>> I know that if I apply for a spin, the lab infrastructure can create ISO
>>> live images from kickstarts. That is nice. But...
>>>
>>> While demonstrating our distro to potential users, we chose a bit
>>> different way than others. Instead of live images shipped on USB drives,
>>> we chose to create a full installation of the system and place it on the
>>> USB drive. This has several benefits compared to live images:
>>>
>>> - changes made by users are persistent and not limited to 4 Gb
>>>
>>> - it is possible to partition the USB drive and create an additional
>>> partition formatted as Exfat for transfering data between Linux and
>>> non-Linux world
>>>
>>> - users can come to whatever computer and boot the system with their
>>> personal configuration, data, software...
>>>
>>> - users can have almost the same experience as if the system was
>>> installed on their primary hard drive
>>>
>>> It can have its drawbacks but we used this approach already two times
>>> while presenting our "spin" on special workshops and we think it
worked
>>> very well.
>>>
>>> I am not against live images and if we create a Fedora spin, we will
>>> definitely offer them as well. But I believe the described alternative
>>> approach has its benefits-
>>>
>>> The whole process is described here:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/vojtapolasek/Fegora
>>>
>>> Currently we use a VM to perform an automated kickstart installation and
>>> then we transfer the raw image on an USB drive.
>>>
>>> My question now is: could the infrastructure used for production of
>>> Fedora spins be used to create not only live images but also our custom
>>> raw disk images? If not, could we at least use those resources to store
>>> such images?
> We can achieve that easily, it's the same process we use for the
> aarch64/iot/cloud images. I suspect it would need a FESCo exception
> for the change but from an infra PoV it works now.
>