[Fedora-livecd-list] livecd-creator problems/questions

[Jeremy Katz]

On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 14:21 -0400, Chris Hubick wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > > 3) Is there any way to find out the final list of packages for a kickstart
> > > file after dependency resolution against a given set of repositories?
> >
> > Not right now -- it could be relatively easily added, but that brings to
> > mind questions for me of how you present it.  Presenting the list of
> > ~850 packages isn't going to be something which you can easily scroll
> > through and say "yes, this is good".  And size is also tricky as finding
> > the final size really requires the install + compression pass.
> >
> > We could potentially give an estimate of the installed size minus the
> > compression.  But then I wonder if you want a prompt or a
> > --dont-do-if-larger-than=size-MiB debug option.
> 
> I don't mind seeing a big huge package list (incl arch) dump if I ask for
> it.  You could put them all on one line and let terminal wrapping take
> care of it, to at least minimize the output size.

It's still going to be a massive list.  And for consistency, it would
make sense to show in the same output format as yum.  Not difficult and
I'd probably take the patch.  I'm likely to get to it ... ermm, not for
a while :-/

> > > 7) Is there any easy way to tell what is being downloaded and how fast?
> > > As it stands now, I have to browse into the tmpdir with Nautilus and
> > > watch.
> >
> > What's being downloaded will be shown as of the next livecd-tools build
> > thanks to a patch from Colin.  Not sure if we can really get rate from
> > urlgrabber easily.
> 
> Excellent, thanks!  Does the output print the size of the package being
> downloaded?  That way I could use mental/gut-feel rate monitoring to know
> if I have a sucky/overloaded mirror.

Right now, the output is just "Downloading foo..." and then "OK" when
the download completes.  Again, accepting patches :)

> > > 8) I waited hours while it downloaded my packages, and then finally I came
> > > back to see this error:
> > [snip]
> >
> > This means there isn't enough space in the root filesystem.  The default
> > rootfs is 4 gigs.  If you want larger (or smaller), you can add a line
> >   part / --size 8192
> > or whatever to your config.  I just committed a change to make this more
> > explicit in the config.
> 
> Ahh! Ok, thanks!
> 
> My first thought is to wonder if setting the default to a size which is
> closer in alignment to a DVD would be better.  But then I start wondering
> about dual-layer, etc, and think probably not.

Yeah, picking a default is always a bit tricky.  I think by making it
explicitly obvious in the config, it'll go a long way towards letting
people think "oh, I want this to be bigger".  We can also think a bit
about somewhat separating out the "minimum" and the "available" size as
the turboliveinst stuff gets merged.  But I don't know that I really
want to rock the boat in that way before F8.

> Another thought - if you integrate the functionality to build directly to
> a usb-thumb-drive or other such filesystem, it could then examine
> that device to provide more sensible defaults for this, as well as more
> intelligable errors if your package selections are too large.

Yeah, there's definitely this.  Although that gets into some of the
other weird big questions (see my reply from earlier today about
appliance images)

Jeremy