[Fedora-livecd-list] Refactoring livecd-creator and providing an API

[Jane Dogalt]

--- Jeremy Katz <katzj at redhat.com> wrote:

> It's time to get back to something that's been discussed on and off for
> a while now and really do it.  And that's to refactor out the core of
> livecd-creator so that it can be used for generating other types of
> images as well as then providing an API to be used by people wanting to
> build various types of interfaces on top of the tools.

... 

> Comments and suggestions appreciated, especially from those building on
> top of livecd-tools or wanting to build other image builders.  

Cool.  So here are my comments, based on how I would like to use it eventually
with my qfakeroot "no root privs, but slow as molasses" framework.

Currently my tools, being influenced heavily by qemu, deal with qemu disk
images as the fundamental object.  First, I have a frontend which generates the
qemu disk image from a kickstart file.  This frontend is meant to be a module,
with alternate ones which support ubuntu etc in the future.  I would like to
use this new livecd-creator API to create another optional frontend, which does
things the 'fedora standard' way.  I think what you described will work fine
for my purposes, i.e. generating an ext3fs.

The thing of course is what you noted, and how it currently does nothing to set
up booting.  I would like to see the same anaconda code that sets up booting,
be available somehow (easily/intentionally) such that I could use it to finish
generating a complete system image.  It may be interesting to ponder this, and
the method I currently use - running traditional anaconda purely
non-interactively under qemu, and then think about code sharing/duplication
issues.

The next thing I'd like to do is- just as taking the image generation part of
livecd-creator and making it an optional frontend in my root-less system, is
take the livecd packaging part, and make it an optional backend in my system. 
I suppose from what you outlined, this seems pretty doable, as I would probably
just make the non package image methods, just mount the stuff from the prior
created qemu image.

Perhaps before or after I try to do all of the above, I may also just try to
get livecd-creator to detect if it's not being run as root, and if my qfakeroot
tool is installed, and if so, run itself under there.  Another interesting
smaller qfakeroot+livecd-creator integration would be to detect running on an
selinux disabled system, and if the target livecd is selinux enabled, use
qfakeroot just for the restorecon operation (which is currently not possible).

Anyway, I've got some paradise to go explore...  afk for a few days ;)

peace...

-jdog



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