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[flux <flux AT sourcemage.org>]

Jeremy Blosser (jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org) wrote [08.09.19 10:48]:
> 1) boot as many places as possible
> 2) contains basic system prep tools (fdisk, mdadm, lvm, ifconfig)
> 3) has the latest grimoire tarball that was created as part of the stable
>    testing
> 
> Nowhere does that say the tools in #2 are the latest versions.  Just the
> latest tarball available to push to the installing system.  Between
> grimoire releases all the ISO updates required by #1 and #2 are if there
> are new places to boot or the existing versions of the system prep tools
> have become deficient for some reason.
> 
> Over the last 1-2 years I have installed at least dozens of SMGL systems at
> work, and only the first couple had anything to do with our ISO.  Since
> then to install a system I boot it (from an ISO other than ours, since our
> 0.9.x series never had working LVM tools on the ISO; I haven't tried 0.10
> yet), I partition it, I run dhcp, then I do 
> 'wget -O- http://imageserver/image.tar.bz2 | tar -xjvf -'.  Et viola, a new
> SMGL system with the latest and greatest grimoire+local stuff in around 15
> minutes, the vast majority of which is wget+untar.  And it doesn't require
> an ISO with the latest grimoire, or an ISO any more special than "has
> working fdisk/mdadm/lvm/dhcp".
> 
> Many of us have been asking for an ISO that does only this for years now
> because it's so trivial to keep current and for the majority of our
> existing users it's all they need to build new systems and get them going.
> I understand completely wanting the ISO itself to be current versions and
> having some guided stuff for new users but the fact is that those things
> have been delaying automatable ISO updates for years now.  We've been
> through at least 4 Cauldron leads in that time and each of them starts with
> the same goals and the same issues in front of them, making a lot of this
> conversation feel like deja vu all over again.  Each one makes major
> progress toward the "big idea" of an ISO, but doesn't get all the way
> there, and the next tends to start over.  And we still don't have the very
> basic thing described above.

Resolving the issue with (1) requires a known-good kernel config, and
any changes with updates to the kernel need to work. This is something
that will need to be constantly updated on the ISO, because the kernel
constantly supports more and more hardware. Therefore, booting in as
many places as possible will mean booting in more places with (possibly)
each new kernel release. This will require an updated kernel both for
the ISO filesystem and for the installed system.

Resolving issue (2) doesn't in theory require newer tools, as you said.
However, practice is not theory, and this is not necessarily true. A
partition created with > 128 inodes will not be bootable with the grub
that was available in stable-0.21. The partitioning tool is of course
necessary on the ISO, while grub would be necessary in the target
system. There's no need for grub on the ISO fs and no need for the
partitioning software in the target system (for the purposes of
installation only). However, a change in one can affect a change in the
other, as just stated. Therefore not all cases of updating the image
tarball can be guaranteed to work with a non-updated ISO. You may get
away with it some of the time, but not all of the time, and if it can't
be guaranteed then why develop it as a process we will rely on?

Resolving (3) is of course easy, because things can just be updated.
However, if you are going to the trouble of downloading the entire
system image from the net after you have the most basic tools on the
ISO, why bother having the grimoire image on the ISO at all? Why not
just require that the user download the grimoire image as well? There is
of course an answer to this: booting in all possible places is not the
only requirement. It will also need to be installable in all possible
places. Not all systems will actually have a network that the user will
be able to access at the time of install. Of course this may not make
sense for a distro like ours since the user would probably be
downloading packages to install afterwards anyway. However, it's a lot
less expensive to download a package onto a usb key than to download an
entire system image that way. Additionally, the system image we provide
does provide enough basic tools that the user will have a working system
without needing all kinds of other things (a very minimal working
system, but a working system nonetheless).

I understand the desire for a more minimal type of ISO, and I do agree
with it. However, as general installation medium, it's not as practical.
That having been said, the current 0.10.0-test3 ISO is easy enough to
modify to get what you want, and then you can just add whatever stable
grimoire release onto it that you choose which the user can just copy
over to use to update their local grimoire after the install via

  scribe update stable from file://path_to_file

If I understand your descriptions correctly, this will give you exactly
what you want already. Please do actually try the ISOs. Again, I haven't
updated to a more recent grimoire yet because of the issue with the
kernel configs, and the newer grimoire releases do also include newer
kernel releases via the linux spell.

-- 
Justin "flux_control" Boffemmyer
Cauldron wizard and general mage
Source Mage GNU/Linux
http://www.sourcemage.org

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