[Fedora-livecd-list] [RFC/PATCH] livecd rebootless installer

[Douglas McClendon]

Douglas McClendon wrote:
> Elias Hunt wrote:
>> Douglas,
>>
>> Assuming that iso-caching-to-disk feature is implemented, would it be
>> easy to have the caching occur on an ext3 partition?
> 

Note, it is even trivial to have an option of whether you want to migrate the 
compressed squashfs base, or the uncompressed ext3fs base.  With the former, you 
would still suffer from decompression during normal use, but the latter would 
take much more disk space.

Live migration of the root fs is just so cool.  Almost makes me want to create a 
fedora derivative where the root fs is _always_ an extra dm linear device layer, 
so that at any point in the future, you can live migrate the root filesystem. 
Use-case:  You have a hard disk failing in a truly mission critical system. 
Now, you can live-migrate the root-fs to an external USB-drive, and then reboot 
to remove the physically failed drive at your leisure.

Have I mentioned that I am a recent BS-CoE grad from KU actively seeking 
employment-  http://douglas.mcclendon.org/resume

(may the mailinglist protocol lords forgive me, yet again ;)

-dmc

> 
> Yup Yup Yup :)  My 2001 project would scan for all partitions it could 
> blindly mount (mount -t auto), and use any that it found available with 
> at least 2X the free space needed.
> 
> I'll take your use-case as added motivation to work on a proof of 
> concept implementation of that feature...  So much code to write... so 
> little time ;)
> 
> -dmc
> 
> 
>>
>> My company actually has a use case where we create custom livecds for
>> hundreds of systems, using a local drive for data storage only as we
>> don't want the OS to be modified permanently (a reboot will restore to
>> normal). Having the performance gain of actually running the iso from
>> the local disk, while still being able to mount the disk for data
>> storage, and being able to insert other CDs to the running system would
>> provide huge benefits.
>>
>> -Eli
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: fedora-livecd-list-bounces at redhat.com
>> [mailto:fedora-livecd-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Douglas
>> McClendon
>> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 5:23 PM
>> To: fedora-livecd-list at redhat.com
>> Subject: Re: [Fedora-livecd-list] [RFC/PATCH] livecd rebootless
>> installer
>>
>> Douglas McClendon wrote:
>>> Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
>>>> Douglas McClendon wrote:
>>
>>>> I'm sure there's /a/ use-case for this technical advancement. Besides
>>>> that, I'm all for any technical advancement -whether it has actual
>>>> use-cases or not.
>>>
>>> /The/ use case is simple.  It does what it does.  It is what it is.  
>>> Whether or not it is well received once it is an available option, 
>>> remains to be seen. Note, that it is trivial to enhance the existing 
>>> patch such that things only happen differently than normal if you pass
>>
>>> 'support_rebootless' on the kernel commandline.
>>>
>>> Also note that it is fairly trivial to add an option so that the user 
>>> can chose whether to live-migrate the cdrom+ram_overlay onto the 
>>> destination volume, or just the cdrom.  In the latter case, the user 
>>> could still eject the cdrom when installation is complete and continue
>>
>>> working in the live system, though on reboot it would forget all the 
>>> live-session modifications and give you a fresh start.
>>
>> A different continuation of this thought, is the modification to support
>> the iso-caching-to-disk functionality I described in my 2001 project.
>> Though now, instead of vfat, use ntfs-3g.
>>
>> I.e. do your live migration to a file on an ntfs partition, such that
>> after the migration
>>
>> a) the user can eject the cdrom and use the cdrom drive for other
>> reasons
>> b) the system will be much more responsive as data is pulled from the
>> ntfs rather than the cdrom
>> c) with a sufficiently modern (i.e. probably doesn't exist yet) version
>> of grub or loadlin, the live environment could be subsequently booted 
>> strait
>> from ntfs, without needing the original livecd.
>>
>> -dmc/jdog
>>
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