[Fedora-livecd-list] persistence and "install to harddrive"

[Jeremy Katz]

On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 16:45 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote:
> Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-08-04 at 12:35 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote:
> >> "live-osimg-min" is setup as part of the livecd init script and is made
> >> up from the squashfs.img and osmin.img. Just wondering what the
> >> advantages are in having the init script setup this device over trying
> >> to create this device just before anaconda is called. 
> > 
> > It's done from the initramfs as that's really the only place we have the
> > information on where to find things.  Otherwise, we'd have to recreate
> > that mapping.
> > 
> >> Now the real question, what would be the best way to have anaconda
> >> pickup the persistent overlay for the "install to hard-drive" part.
> >> Could you just create a second device-mapper snapshot using the same
> >> overlay and squashfs.img just presented as read-only in /dev/mapper?
> > 
> > Yeah, you could easily just do a snapshot and then set LIVE_BLOCK to
> > that. 
> > 
> Got a magic string? ;-)  DMC, Can you point me in the direction please? 
> I'll play around...

Not off-hand.  But basically the same sort of thing as is the dmsetup
lines in mkliveinitrd.

> >> then do something like:
> > [snip]
> >> I'm thinking that an overlay file might be a mode that could be used in
> >> the future to update the livecd just before you install to the disk.  
> > 
> > So you're thinking like an overlay you'd download which would have the
> > updates pre-applied?  What's the advantage of that over just downloading
> > the updates post-install?
> 
> Ok, updates is a bit short sighted, but yes. How about an enterprise 
> mass rolling out, incorporating customizations for the organization? Is 
> that a better use for this potential "feature".

Sure, but I'm just not 100% sure why they'd go to the effort of doing it
that way rather than just building a new iso (perhaps with --base-on
after I fix it :-)

And I'm not saying I'm against it, it's just not a case that I see huge
amounts of usage that aren't accomplishable in other ways

Jeremy