UsrMove feature (was Re: FESCo meeting minutes for 2011-10-24)

[Harald Hoyer]

On 10/27/2011 03:01 PM, Phil Knirsch wrote:
> On 10/27/2011 11:00 AM, Harald Hoyer wrote:
>> On 10/26/2011 09:05 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2011-10-26 at 15:40 +0200, Harald Hoyer wrote:
>>>> On 10/24/2011 08:05 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
>>>>>> ===================================
>>>>>> #fedora-meeting: FESCO (2011-10-24)
>>>>>> ===================================
>>>>>> * Discussion about https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove
>>>>>> (t8m, 17:26:45)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sometimes you have to clean up your room and tidy up the mess, which
>>>> piled up over time. This cleanup can be done on one day and checked in
>>>> by one person. It's not rocket science! It does not break anything,
>>>> because the compat symlinks will _not_ go away.
>>>
>>> Every time someone says this, something winds up breaking anyway,
>>> because of some kind of oddness like situations where the symlinks
>>> aren't read or become recursive, or selinux issues (always a fun one)!
>>
>> I am running my F16 system with all these symlinks now for quiet a
>> while. Despite the consolehelper symlinks, I have not encountered any
>> problem. Even rpm updates seem to work fine. But I agree, the devil is
>> in the detail, and we surely will find something, which does not work.
>> But I don't think, these problems are severe and not easily fixable.
>
> If you already have a system running that way how about if you put
> together a document how to do this and let other people or even Fedora
> QA test it out and run it through their testsuits?
>
> That way we'd have a lot more eyes on it, could spot issues with it much
> faster and could get the whole idea a solid ground before it's widely
> introduced to Fedora and everything would already have been prepared for
> it, avoiding exactly those possibly missed oddball or exotic scenarios.
>
> Just my $0.02 after seeing you eating your own dogfood first (eeeewwww,
> grosss! ;))).
>
> Thanks & regards, Phil
>

1. create a dracut initramfs with a bash as the standard shell
# dracut -o dash -f

2. reboot

3. Add "rd.break rd.shell" to the kernel command line and you are 
dropped to the dracut shell.

# mount -o remount,rw /sysroot

beware not to start paths with / or just prefix them with /sysroot

- remove the consolehelper symlinks in /sysroot/usr/bin
- move stuff to /sysroot/usr/bin from /sysroot/bin /sysroot/sbin 
sysroot/usr/sbin
- move stuff from /sysroot/lib* to /sysroot/usr/lib*
- remove the old dirs
- create the _relative_ symlinks

# mount -o remount,ro /sysroot

4. exit dracut
# exit

Then you should be booted into your changed system.