[Fedora-livecd-list] [RFC/PATCH] livecd rebootless installer

[Douglas McClendon]

Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
> Douglas McClendon wrote:
>> Douglas McClendon wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Theoretical Workaround #1-5
>>> -------------------------
> 
> Just curious; I like what I'm reading, although I do not follow some 
> parts of the theoretical workarounds, but: Is there any particular use 
> case for all of this? I'm asking, because the only thing I can think of, 
> it's all this work being done to prevent a user's "5-min-avg-uptime" 
> desktop from having to reboot after install from a live disc.

Short answer - dunno.  I think however "5-min-avg-uptime" doesn't quite describe 
it.  The essence of why liveCDs are cool(==useful?) in the first place, is 
because they allow users to try out the complete system, without the 
traditionally complex and problematic process of installing and configuring a 
linux system.  I'm not sure if in 2001 I or Mr. Knopper could really have 
foreseen the plethora of use-cases for liveCDs as they are used today.

In a similar vein, I would say that, perhaps this feature, which I'm just 
working on out of pure spite for "unnecessary reboots" will spark someone else's 
imagination, and use-cases will become more evident in the future.  Don't even 
get me started about seeing setroubleshoot suggesting that I reboot my system to 
fix a problem...

Also, as to actual use-cases, clearly persistance-to-USB flash as already 
described in the livecd-tools wish-list is _vastly_ more useful than all this 
hackery.  But as it turns out, implementing that involves mechanisms of the same 
nature as these hacks.  I'll segway that to...

Theoretical Alternate Implementation #1
---------------------------------------

Utilize Mark McCloughlin's dm-snapshot merging patch alluded to here -

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/StatelessLinuxCachedClient

That page, along with this one-

http://linuxgazette.net/114/kapil.html

should tie your brain in even more knots ;)  Maybe by the time you've untied, 
you'll have stumbled across some important use-cases that no one has considered 
yet, because they didn't know it was possible.

-dmc/jdog