Re: nfs/livecd install hack

[Jerry Vonau <jvonau shaw ca>]

Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 20:07 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote:
>> Jeremy Katz wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 12:46 -0500, Jerry Vonau wrote:
>>>> 	I've been playing around with both anaconda and the live-cd, and I had
>>>> an idea to kind of merge the two. I took advantage up the RHupdates
>>>> override on a nfs install, to have anaconda use a squashfs.img that is
>>>> on the nfs server in /LiveOS/,(this could use a bit of work...) creating
>>>> the same device name as the the live-cd install is looking for. Once
>>>> that is done, anaconda uses a patched livecd.py to install to the
>>>> harddrive. This is more of a proof of concept them prime code..   ;)
>>>> First I altered fedora.py in installclass, flags.py, bootloader.py,
>>>> livecd.py, and added a new one called livefs.py, adding them in
>>>> /RHupdates/ to incorporate my changes with out really having to play
>>>> with the loader.
>>> I wouldn't expect that you would have to go this far... you should
>>> really be able to just mount your NFS dir, loopback mount the
>>> squashfs.img and losetup the os.img block device and then you just need
>>> to run anaconda with the right args as liveinst does.  
>> I tried that, by placing an anaconda file in RHupdates with with the
>> same string that liveinst uses:
>> /usr/sbin/anaconda --method=livecd://dev/live-osimg
>> That worked but after the coping image part there was a warning (from
>> bootloader.py) that there was no kernel packages were installed, and the
>> bootloader will not be changed. Then I was off to add the flag and edit
>> bootloader.py. That fixed the warning, but no joy, no grub.conf
> 
> Do you have a kernel package installed in your image?  Specifically a
> package named kernel.  Otherwise, the check in livecd.py's
> kernelVersionList() won't work -- patches cheerfully accepted to make it
> handle at least looking for anything that provides kernel :-)

Yes, there is a kernel installed, a stock f7, off-the-net live image was
used. Think I found the issue, in kernelVersionList
ts = rpm.TransactionSet() is looking at the running system and not at
the newly installed image. Changing that line to
ts = rpm.TransactionSet("/mnt/sysimage") results in a db version
mismatch error when run from the "normal" installer but not when run
from the livecd, but if I do a "rm -f /mnt/sysimage/var/lib/rpm/__db.*"
before calling kernelVersionList, in the installer, I get a new initrd,
grub.conf, it all works. :-)

I'm just not sure why there is the db version mis-match between the
livecd and the "normal" installer. I'll leave that for another time to
figure out.

Jerry