Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer

[Douglas McClendon]

Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 09:27 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon:
>> Douglas McClendon wrote:
>>> Christoph Wickert wrote:
>>>> Am Dienstag, den 14.07.2009, 08:09 -0600 schrieb Douglas McClendon:
>>>>      2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new
>>>>         system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel
>>>>         from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the
>>>>         running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that
>>>>         was installed.
>>> As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is 
>>> the running kernel.  (unless the f11 installer already allows you to 
>>> trigger a chrooted yum update as part of install).
>> Ok, I'll show my good fedora developer maturity and call it a 'night' 
>> now that I'm starting to get sloppy.  That should have been worded-
>>
>> As with a current LiveOS installation, the installation media kernel is 
>> the running kernel.  Even if the f11 installer already allows you to 
>> trigger a chrooted yum update as part of the install, you won't be 
>> running the updated kernel until after a reboot.
> 
> There is no chrooted yum update but the updated packages get installed
> *instead* of the old ones from the installation media.

I believe you are speaking of the most traditional (DVD) installer, and 
not the LiveOS/CD/USB installer.  I just added the following to the 
feature wiki-

clarification note: This is only an alternate method to the current 
LiveOS installer. This method does not provide any interesting 
alternative to the old school non-live DVD installer. Though it does 
provide an alternative for DVD-sized LiveOS spin's installers. This 
architecture could provide a rebootless equivalent to what it sounds 
like opensuse achieves with kexec, but that is just an idea with no 
proof of concept yet, unrelated to this feature. Nor does this feature 
pertain in any way to upgrade scenarios, just as the current Fedora 
LiveOS installer does not (I believe) support any kind of upgrade. (I 
believe vanilla anaconda may be usable to perform upgrades from the 
current LiveCD, but that is not a use-case that is well 
documented/advertised. Wiki editors, please confirm/deny)

>> Thanks everyone for the vetting so far.  
> 
> Thanks a lot for the proposal and the work you've put into it. I'm sure
> we all are interested in it, but many of use are just a little skeptical
> if it really works out. Please don't let this skepticism scare you. :)

No need to worry, I've been around the fedora-devel block once or twice 
before.  The technique/technology here I first published as a bash 
script on this list a couple years ago.  I think what is sinking in is 
that people need GUIs and lots of clear documentation in order to 
mitigate their skepticism.  It's getting there...

Thanks,

-dmc