Feature proposal: Rebootless Installer

[Douglas McClendon]

Bill McGonigle wrote:
> On 07/14/2009 11:04 AM, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>>      2. Imagine after the installation you switch rebootless to the new
>>         system and install a kmod. But you are still running the kernel
>>         from the installation medium and kmods get installed for the
>>         running kernel, which not necessarily needs to be the one that
>>         was installed.
> 
> Would it be feasible to fetch the current kernel from the 'net (if
> possible/permitted) and kexec into it before proceeding with the install?

Short answer- Yes.  Though mainly for systems with 1+G ram and/or usb 
persistence, because a kernel and anaconda upgrade will take a healthy 
chunk of space in the overlay.

I do like this idea, for instance, as an optional bootloader choice.

The key thing though, is this would have to happen, _at boot up_.  I.e. 
to get the kexec out of the way before the user dives into things. 
Otherwise the user has to see a kexec reboot, which while skipping the 
BIOS, is still a 'reboot experience'.

But this is not at all within the scope of the currently proposed feature.

> 
> With liveUSB there's persistence, but is there a way to have a ramdisk
> survive kexec for liveCD?

Hmm...  Short answer- I don't know.  If not now, it's probably just a 
kexec kernel feature enhancement away to find a way to protect some 
arbitrary hunk of ram during kexec.

> 
> Heck, fetch the latest anaconda too, and get rid of some of the zero-day
> problems we have that require respins now.

Yes, as above, I agree that would be a pretty cool feature (again, 
beyond the scope of the one currently being discussed).

peace...

-dmc