Anaconda and network-attached storage devices

[R P Herrold]

On Fri, 27 Jul 2012, Petr Schindler wrote:

> It is a big problem. Lot of things will be broken (won't be in new
> anaconda for F18, but should be again in next releases, 
> hopefully).  ...
> ... and I hope that
> the discussion within this threads will lead to some action - for me it
> would be better to wait, but it looks like we could wait another six
> month.

'hope is not a plan' -- Here's a use case discussion ...

A couple weeks ago, I had to do a system recovery on an older 
unit, where a partition containing the binaries one needed 
developed drive errors recently.  It was old enough (F12 era), 
I could use the trick of booting with:
 	init=/bin/sh
to get the unit up 'enough' that I could do FSCKs and fix 
libraries enough to get ssh and rsync running, and so suck off 
the content not covered by backups (a couple of weeks of 
delta) 'across the wire'.  The unit happened to be up at a 
datacenter, and so inconvenient to simply 'pull the drive' out 
of, for data recovery

With the cut to systemd, none of us has those kind of 'tricks' 
at hand yet, and a media boot into 'rescue mode' with a kernel 
'close' to what one is repairing, is pretty well mandatory. 
It is probably possible to do so via PXE, but would be 
extrordinarily cumbersome to document in the general case

It may be that a live CD will turn the trick for rescue modes, 
but the reason one falls back to install media (and 'rescue 
mode') is for hardware and LV fixup/ drive detection, and 
finally being able to chroot into a sick drive ... that is, 
to perform the rescue

The absence of TUI rescue may be OK is RawHide (where it is 
permissible to eat kittens for breakfast), but not for a 
formal release, I would think ... perhaps a separate 'Recovery 
disk' ISO might be spun, with the F17 anaconda but F18 kernel, 
and ancillaries?  I 'get it' that it is cumbersome to maintain 
two paths, but without some way to address recovery, I have to 
think that well-advised folks will simply 'give a pass' to 
a 'risky' F18

- Russ herrold