/usr move testing status and F17 Alpha TC1

[Adam Williamson]

Hey, folks. Just wanted to keep the lines of communication open about
our results testing the /usr move feature.

On upgrading existing Rawhide installs: we have multiple reports of
people who have been able to do so successfully following the
instructions given by Harald in the post 'Fedora 17’s unified filesystem
(/usr-move)'. 

However, we have one report that when a kernel package is installed
after the migration, the initramfs that is generated will be
missing /lib/libc.so.6, and will fail to boot:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2012-January/105317.html

Tim Flink has been trying to build a boot.iso using the /usr move
packages, to establish whether we can successfully build images with
the /usr move stuff and whether they will then boot and work (install a
bootable system). He has not yet been able to do so, and there is one
issue in particular he suspects is not specific to his compose process
or build machine and may affect official image composes if we land
the /usr move changes. He's continuing to investigate this and will
report his findings once he's more sure of them.

Given the above, and noting also the current confusion about whether
explicit Provides are needed for things moved from /bin to /usr/bin and
whether that's acceptable, I'd suggest it may be premature to land the
changes into Rawhide proper at this time.

We have Fedora 17 Alpha TC1 scheduled to be composed today. I think it
may be best to go ahead and spin TC1 without the /usr move changes, so
we have - hopefully - a functional baseline for our initial validation
testing. Once the above issues - and any others that arise - are
verified and, if necessary, addressed, we can go ahead and tag the /usr
move changes into Rawhide, and spin a TC2.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net