Fedora 17’s unified filesystem (/usr-move)

Stijn Hoop stijn at sandcat.nl
Fri Jan 27 13:33:08 UTC 2012


Hi,

thanks for the detailed instructions for testing. I am not sure
though, whether any of this is applicable on a system already running
rawhide?

Reading this, I surmise that I have to do the following steps once
these packages hit rawhide. Can you comment on the correctness?

> Currently installed systems need some manual steps to convert the
> current system to match the layout of rawhide/Fedora 17. After that,
> the system can continue to be updated with YUM as usual.

> Download and install the most recent dracut package from rawhide:
>  # yum --enablerepo=rawhide update dracut

This will hit me soon automatically (as it is in rawhide proper, and I
update regularly).

> Update the installed initramfs image for your current kernel, and
> instruct dracut to include the dracut module to convert your current
> filesystem: # dracut --force --add usrmove
> 
> If dracut detects ‘rd.usrmove’ on the kernel command line at bootup,
> it starts the filesystem conversion of the root filesystem.
> 
> Change the following kernel commandline parameter directly in the
> bootloader menu, which is shown during bootup, or edit the line
> in /etc/grub*.cfg.
>  - remove “ro”
>  - append “rw” to let dracut mount your root filesystem writeable
>  - remove “rhgb” to hide the graphical bootsplash
>  - append “rd.info” to get a more verbose output from dracut
>  - append “rd.usrmove” to enable the /usr-move conversion script in
> dracut

These two steps are needed as well, however...

>  - append “selinux=0” for now, because the relabeling in a converted
> F16 system does not seem to work properly at this moment

... do you know if this is applicable for a correctly labeled rawhide
as well?

> Any files with conflicting names, which the conversion could not
> resolve, will be backed up to files named *.usrmove~ residing
> in /usr/lib, /usr/lib64, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin.

Sidenote: should we file these as bugs?

> After a successful conversion, revert the changes made to the kernel
> command line in the bootloader config file /etc/grub*.cfg.

This step is needed.

> SELinux relabelling should take effect after you rebooted your
> updated system and can take a long time (at least in a VM it takes
> insanely long and is still not finished). We are currently
> investigating, what seem to take so long, so you might consider to
> test with SELinux disabled for now.

Again, is this only for hosts based on F16?

> Until the rawhide repository gets all the converted rpms, use the
> f17-usrmove repository to update the system after the filesystem
> conversion and disable rawhide in the
> file /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-rawhide.repo

When the tag hits rawhide proper, I assume this can be skipped?

Can I update dracut now, and wait for the rest of the tag to hit
rawhide before adding the rd.usrmove flag?

Regards,

--Stijn


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