[Fedora-livecd-list] Targetting other file systems besides iso

[David Zeuthen]

On Tue, 2007-04-24 at 15:10 -0400, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> At OLPC we need to support ext3 and jffs2 builds even more so than
> livecd isos.  Since most of the process is the same up until the final
> image and bootloaders we would like to add this support into the livecd
> tools so that all fedora projects use one toolchain.  The question is
> how can this best be accomplished?
> 
> I think passing a --variant switch (i.e. --variant=jffs2) should switch
> the backend to generating the correct image.  

I think adding an option 

 --target=[livecd|
           disk_msdos_ext3|
           disk_msdos_ext3_separate_boot|
           ext3|
           jffs2]

with this help text (for --help)

 --target     Choose target mode; defaults to livecd
              livecd: A compressed livecd ISO with the root file system
              disk_msdos_ext3 : An image with a MSDOS partitioning
                                table, a single ext3 data partition and
                                a bootloader for IBM PC hardware
              disk_msdos_ext3_separate_boot : Like disk_msdos_ext3 only
                                that /boot is on a separate partition.
              ext3            : A single ext3 partition
              jffs2           : A jffs2 file system

is what we want. Perhaps disk_msdos_ext3_separate_boot can be achieved
by a separate option just like we have --skip-compression for
--target=livecd. Thoughts?

> This also requires
> template support and the ability to select templates to write out based
> on the variant in the %post.  For instance the olpc.fth file is read in
> by the openfirmware.  For jffs2 builds we point to the nand on the XO
> machines.  For ext3 we point to a USB disk.  Also on ext3 we write out
> grub entries for use with standard machines and vitalization software
> like qemu.

The olpc.fth business is probably not something we need to teach the
livecd tools about at all; e.g. it's simply just something you do in %
post depending on the target. This raises the question of how do we pass
"options" like --target to kickstart so you can do different things
depending. An environment variable. Jeremy?

      David