Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer

[Douglas McClendon]

Felix Miata wrote:
> On 2009/07/14 02:04 (GMT-0600) Douglas McClendon composed:
> [snip]
>> http://viros.org/rebootless
> 
> Doesn't kexec, which does a BIOS bypassing reboot, accomplish what you want?
> OpenSUSE's installer has had kexec_reboot=1 by default for a version or two
> (I think default started with 11.1): http://en.opensuse.org/Kexec
> http://en.opensuse.org/Linuxrc

No, from a user experience perspective, a kexec 'warm' reboot is still a 
reboot.  There is AFAIK no user experience example to look to in 
comparison.  Perhaps somewhere along the line people tried pivot_roots 
after installation, but short of this devicemapper trick, there was 
always the trouble that tied up file descriptors would prevent you from 
being able to eject the livecd.  I could be wrong about that, or my 
interpretation of what kexec does (I've read about it often in LWN, but 
never knowingly used it).

Your first link seems currently broken (database error), and the second 
doesn't really lead me to believe it is anything equivalent.  I haven't 
used *suse that much recently so I can't be sure- Is it perhaps 
something where they have a very minimal partial installation, then 
start writing the minimal stuff to disk, kexec-reboot, and then set you 
up in system that is finishing installing while you use it?  If so, one 
way to describe the major benefit of my rebootless installer, is that 
you get to boot the livecd/usb environment, *then use it as such*, and 
at your option, desire, and convenience, decide to permanently install 
the LiveOS you have just been using and configuring, to disk.  And of 
course when done, just pop out the livecd/usb, and your are done... and 
free to leave your system with a continuingly increasing uptime :)

peace...

-dmc