Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

Hey, folks. Since there's been some discussion on test@ about
possibly-missing features with the f18 newUI transition, I wanted to
make sure we're all on the same page about what needs to be in for f18.

the two features QA was worried about missing are text mode
installation, and the rescue mode that's present on the DVD/netinst
images.

on text install: apparently it's now the plan that a basic text mode
will be included in f18 and may even make Alpha. As long as that's a
commitment then that should work out fine and is no longer a worry.

on rescue mode: we would like to see a roughly functional equivalent
replacement for rescue mode present in f18, with considerable
flexibility as to the exact form.

as far as I can tell, these are the major features of rescue mode:

1) bring up network
2) mount installed system partitions
3) provide rescue shell with binaries from installed system in $PATH

it also has a 'diagnostics' thing, but that seems somewhat obscure - it
gives you a screen full of cryptic output when you run it, but that
output almost all appears to come from some sort of mdraid analysis
thingy. It doesn't seem to do much beyond that. Anyone have more details
on the 'diagnostics' feature and how it's supposed to work?

Anyway, diagnostics aside, it shouldn't be too much effort to implement
something that does 1, 2 and 3. One idea has been to make it as a module
for dracut. wwoods suggested "personally what I'd want to do is use
lorax and make a rescue runtime, or just add stuff to a rescue target in
the normal anaconda runtime". I'm not making any suggestion for what
method would be best - anything works so long as there's something =)

If anaconda team can commit to a rescue mode replacement for f18 final
at least, that'd be great. thanks. Also, if anyone's aware of any other
major functionality that might go away with newUI - besides what's
already been discussed or called out on the feature page - please let us
know. thanks!
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

On 07/30/2012 12:53 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:

on text install: apparently it's now the plan that a basic text mode
will be included in f18 and may even make Alpha. As long as that's a
commitment then that should work out fine and is no longer a worry.


The commitment at this point is that "there may be a basic text mode
available by Alpha and in F18". Keyword "may". I cannot make any
commitment beyond that.


--
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

On Mon, 2012-07-30 at 12:53 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> on text install: apparently it's now the plan that a basic text mode
> will be included in f18 and may even make Alpha. As long as that's a
> commitment then that should work out fine and is no longer a worry.

I don't know that it is a commitment, but it would be awesome if the
folks most concerned about text mode read Jesse's thread on the design
of it and gave feedback *now* :)

~m

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

On Tue, 2012-07-31 at 11:15 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-07-30 at 12:53 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > on text install: apparently it's now the plan that a basic text mode
> > will be included in f18 and may even make Alpha. As long as that's a
> > commitment then that should work out fine and is no longer a worry.
>
> I don't know that it is a commitment, but it would be awesome if the
> folks most concerned about text mode read Jesse's thread on the design
> of it and gave feedback *now* :)

I'll post a pointer on test@. I think most people just want text mode to
be present in some form, I'm not sure if they're terribly concerned
about the design; the text mode from oldUI is already pretty
rudimentary.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

> on text install: apparently it's now the plan that a basic text mode
> will be included in f18 and may even make Alpha. As long as that's a
> commitment then that should work out fine and is no longer a worry.

The alpha change deadline is August 14, so I can't really see that
happening. Even more critically, the string freeze deadline is the same
day.

I'm not willing to commit to that, no matter how hard Martin and Jesse
work. I just don't think there's enough time. I suppose beta is
possible given it being a month later, but then people are just going to
complain about major things being done after the feature freeze.

> on rescue mode: we would like to see a roughly functional equivalent
> replacement for rescue mode present in f18, with considerable
> flexibility as to the exact form.

I don't think rescue mode is too difficult to do. We've just not worked
on it, barely talked about it, and not put anyone on the task. It's not
alpha criteria so I haven't been especially worried about it.

> If anaconda team can commit to a rescue mode replacement for f18 final
> at least, that'd be great. thanks. Also, if anyone's aware of any other
> major functionality that might go away with newUI - besides what's
> already been discussed or called out on the feature page - please let us
> know. thanks!

Advanced storage filtering's not going to be there for F18 either.

- Chris

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

> I'll post a pointer on test@. I think most people just want text mode to
> be present in some form, I'm not sure if they're terribly concerned
> about the design; the text mode from oldUI is already pretty
> rudimentary.

And we'd like to replace it with something well thought out, designed,
and not crap - not just some new stop gap while we work on a better one
yet again.

- Chris

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

On 08/01/2012 03:01 PM, Chris Lumens wrote:

on text install: apparently it's now the plan that a basic text mode
>will be included in f18 and may even make Alpha. As long as that's a
>commitment then that should work out fine and is no longer a worry.

The alpha change deadline is August 14, so I can't really see that
happening. Even more critically, the string freeze deadline is the same
day.

I'm not willing to commit to that, no matter how hard Martin and Jesse
work. I just don't think there's enough time. I suppose beta is
possible given it being a month later, but then people are just going to
complain about major things being done after the feature freeze.


>on rescue mode: we would like to see a roughly functional equivalent
>replacement for rescue mode present in f18, with considerable
>flexibility as to the exact form.

I don't think rescue mode is too difficult to do. We've just not worked
on it, barely talked about it, and not put anyone on the task. It's not
alpha criteria so I haven't been especially worried about it.


>If anaconda team can commit to a rescue mode replacement for f18 final
>at least, that'd be great. thanks. Also, if anyone's aware of any other
>major functionality that might go away with newUI - besides what's
>already been discussed or called out on the feature page - please let us
>know. thanks!

Advanced storage filtering's not going to be there for F18 either.


Given the lack of text/rescue mode and other feature is it not best to
delay the "newUI" anaconda til F19 and fallback on using F17's anaconda
instead of presenting our user base with half finished product at best?


JBG

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

> Given the lack of text/rescue mode and other feature is it not best
> to delay the "newUI" anaconda til F19 and fallback on using F17's
> anaconda instead of presenting our user base with half finished
> product at best?

The graphical UI is the main anaconda UI. VNC mode will still be
available for people who cannot use graphical mode for some reason. The
features we're not working on for F18 (text, advanced storage filtering)
represent a very small portion of Fedora users, and we're going to have
them back for F19. We are trying to take our time to do these things
right instead of just rush them out. I think saying "half finished
product at best" is disinginuous and inflammatory considering the amount
of work we have put into the UI that most everyone uses.

The feature as-is has already been voted on and accepted for F18 based
upon the knowledge that there wouldn't be any text mode. We have been
very up front about that.

I think we can probably do rescue mode, we just need to look at it and
it won't be for alpha.

If F17 anaconda is used for F18, it's not going to see any work at all
besides the absolute minimum of bug fixing required to keep it limping
along. We are not going to put any sigificant resources into a dead-end
code base.

- Chris

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

Hi,

> Given the lack of text/rescue mode and other feature is it not best
> to
> delay the "newUI" anaconda til F19 and fallback on using F17's
> anaconda
> instead of presenting our user base with half finished product at
> best?

Not really. Let me explain:

Currently, rescue mode just starts networking, mounts whatever it finds and starts shell. Well we can probably include shell trigger "spoke" in the newui if "rescue" is present on the boot prompt. Network will be up by that time and all the tools will also be there.

Text mode in F17 was actually very limited and we might be able to use the new code to just let the user select the destination partition and create root password. But probably not before beta.

--
Martin Sivak
Anaconda Brno

----- Original Message -----
> On 08/01/2012 03:01 PM, Chris Lumens wrote:
> >> on text install: apparently it's now the plan that a basic text
> >> mode
> >> >will be included in f18 and may even make Alpha. As long as
> >> >that's a
> >> >commitment then that should work out fine and is no longer a
> >> >worry.
> > The alpha change deadline is August 14, so I can't really see that
> > happening. Even more critically, the string freeze deadline is the
> > same
> > day.
> >
> > I'm not willing to commit to that, no matter how hard Martin and
> > Jesse
> > work. I just don't think there's enough time. I suppose beta is
> > possible given it being a month later, but then people are just
> > going to
> > complain about major things being done after the feature freeze.
> >
> >> >on rescue mode: we would like to see a roughly functional
> >> >equivalent
> >> >replacement for rescue mode present in f18, with considerable
> >> >flexibility as to the exact form.
> > I don't think rescue mode is too difficult to do. We've just not
> > worked
> > on it, barely talked about it, and not put anyone on the task.
> > It's not
> > alpha criteria so I haven't been especially worried about it.
> >
> >> >If anaconda team can commit to a rescue mode replacement for f18
> >> >final
> >> >at least, that'd be great. thanks. Also, if anyone's aware of any
> >> >other
> >> >major functionality that might go away with newUI - besides
> >> >what's
> >> >already been discussed or called out on the feature page - please
> >> >let us
> >> >know. thanks!
> > Advanced storage filtering's not going to be there for F18 either.
>
> Given the lack of text/rescue mode and other feature is it not best
> to
> delay the "newUI" anaconda til F19 and fallback on using F17's
> anaconda
> instead of presenting our user base with half finished product at
> best?
>
> JBG
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Anaconda-devel-list@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
>

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Key installer functionality for F18: rescue mode, text/serial console mode
 

On 08/01/2012 03:33 PM, Chris Lumens wrote:

Given the lack of text/rescue mode and other feature is it not best
to delay the "newUI" anaconda til F19 and fallback on using F17's
anaconda instead of presenting our user base with half finished
product at best?

The graphical UI is the main anaconda UI. VNC mode will still be
available for people who cannot use graphical mode for some reason. The
features we're not working on for F18 (text, advanced storage filtering)
represent a very small portion of Fedora users, and we're going to have
them back for F19. We are trying to take our time to do these things
right instead of just rush them out. I think saying "half finished
product at best" is disinginuous and inflammatory considering the amount
of work we have put into the UI that most everyone uses.


What's the rush as in why not wait another release cycle when Anaconda
is better finished?


There is absolutely nothing wrong with delaying this for another release
cycle.




The feature as-is has already been voted on and accepted for F18 based
upon the knowledge that there wouldn't be any text mode. We have been
very up front about that.


I'm not that worried about text mode personally thou other have shown it
some concern on the test list.


Corporate administrators in real enterprise deployments use kickstart
files for installments ( atleast here on top of the world ) so from my
point of view I would understand if you guys wanted to reduce your
codebase and kill it altogether.




I think we can probably do rescue mode, we just need to look at it and
it won't be for alpha.


This however is something that worries me more.


If F17 anaconda is used for F18, it's not going to see any work at all
besides the absolute minimum of bug fixing required to keep it limping
along. We are not going to put any sigificant resources into a dead-end
code base.


Nor did I expect you to do so.

JBG

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