[Fedora-livecd-list] pilgrim livecd work

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 23:04 +0530, Rahul wrote:
> Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 11:53 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> >> On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 20:43 +0530, Rahul wrote:
> >>> How do you plan on performing upgrades when the live cd gets a install 
> >>> to hard disk feature?
> >> Well, I've written about that in the README.fedora file. Lemme
> >> cut'n'paste so people can rip it apart. It's basically just a braindump,
> >> I haven't written code for this just yet (patches welcome!). 
> >>
> >> So.. my plan basically just involves running 'yum -y update' in the
> >> chroot you install to. Not sure we need any UI, some progress feedback
> >> would be nice, not sure if yum can do that already. Seth?
> >>
> >> Specifically this means that once you boot into the installed OS all
> >> updates will have been applied. Clearly this requires network
> >> connectivity but such is life. I also expect that it's feasible to do
> > 
> > Right; we certainly can't fit all Fedora Core packages on one LiveCD,
> > since a LiveCD is obviously only _one_ CD.  So you'd never be able to
> > upgrade off packages from a CD.  Furthermore with Extras its highly
> > likely that people have packages from Extras, and that doesn't fit on a
> > CD either.
> > 
> > About the only reasons you might _ever_ want to update from a LiveCD are
> > (a) to test your hardware with the new kernel, and to (b) see what new
> > apps and features are around, before you actually do the update.  I
> > don't see what is all that useful about doing the actual update from
> > from the LiveCD itself though, versus rebooting and running a small tool
> > to pull down new .repo files and doing the equivalent of 'yum update'
> > which other tools already do for us.
> 
> This method is not widely documented or easy to use yet AFAIK.
> 
> > 
> > What's the use-case here for update from a LiveCD anyway?  Why?
> > 
> 
> Basically. My interest in having a install/upgrade from a Live CD is 
> directly related to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/FreeMedia.
> 
> Fedora is currently 5 CD's/ One DVD and this is expected to grow once 
> when have Fedora Extras on the media too which might be as soon as FC7 
> since its kind of a prerequisite for this - 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/UnleashKDE. In effect we might see the 
> number of CD's double or even more.

Right; I'm not questioning the use of a LiveCD _install_.  I completely
agree there.  I'm questioning the use of a LiveCD _upgrade_.

dan


> A useful desktop set requires the first two CD's in Fedora through the 
> Anaconda method and you can only perform a minimalistic installation 
> from a single CD. Currently we are distributing DVD's in Free media 
> program instead which is a problem in many regions where DVD drivers and 
> media is costly and not widely used. Magazines and books prefer to 
> distribute distributions which have a single CD more often to reduce 
> their costs. There is also a perception of "bloat" related to the number 
> of CD's.
> 
> In events and for Freemedia distributions it would much more effective 
> to hand out a single live CD with a hard disk installation feature. Of 
> course people might want more software and they would have to grab it 
> off the internet or some other distribution mechanism but a single 
> installalable live CD covers the typical use case and promotional needs.
> 
> Once this method is propagated and commonly used, users would already 
> have installations which they would want to upgrade later. Having this 
> functionality in a Live CD would mean that I could just forget about 
> Anaconda in Fedora and stick with a Live CD for all my needs which is 
> confined to a desktop and grabbing stuff on demand off the network.

But it's not clear to me why you'd want to upgrade from a LiveCD rather
than just boot into your already-installed image and do a 'yum upgrade'.
There's _nothing_ that a LiveCD-based install process would consist of
other than a 'yum upgrade', except that you're running off the livecd.

I guess there is a 'seamless' aspect to this, such that you can use the
same CD for both the update payload (the new .repo files) and test the
hardware in the same bootup.  I'm not sure if the small benefit of doing
everything in the same boot outweighs the disadvantage of complicating
the CD with update logic which could just as easily be done in the real
system, since both LiveCD and real system would end up running 'yum
upgrade' anyway.

Dan