[CentOS-devel] Considering repo re-structuring

[Douglas McClendon]

On 11/29/2010 06:16 AM, Karanbir Singh wrote:
> On 11/27/2010 09:10 PM, Douglas McClendon wrote:
>> If you want fast, nothing beats a LiveCD/USB, particularly the way
>> fedora's livecd-tools does it (dd fs copy, with my convoluted dm
>
> thats not true. A bare metal install will finish before your livecd has
> finished booting. I have c5/node's build in just under 270 seconds from
> machine powerup - usb/optical media just cant shift data fast enough to
> first boot an environment then kickup an installed.

Sure, pedantically you are no doubt correct even though I have no idea 
what a 'bare metal install' means in this context.

>
> ok, things might have changed in fedora13+; but I'd still like to see it
> being done.

no, I'm not talking anything that new, just standard f8 and onward.

>
>> optimization).  If you want super-fast, throw a rebootless installer
>> (zyx-liveinstaller) on top of that.  Oops, I just willfully spammed the
>
> .. and you lose any/all management ability from the standard
> distro-aware tools. Ofcourse, that does not matter if you don't need
> those tools anyway.

Also here I don't really know what you mean.  Though yes, LiveCD 
installations are presently still less flexible in several ways than the 
traditional installer.  I was just pointing out that they are also more 
flexible in several ways, and my rebootless installer takes both sides 
of that even further.

I didn't mean to suggest abandoning the traditional installer.  I mean I 
am crazy, but not _that_ crazy :)  I do believe however that when most 
people compare a traditional DVD install, or even the fanangled 
traditional DVD image on usb boot media, to the LiveCD/DVD/USB method, 
with or without my novelty rebootless alternative, they will find the 
experience to be drastically speedier (at least in many cases).  Simply 
because writing 10K files to a filesystem takes a lot longer than dd'ing 
a filesystem image.  (and invoking rpm to install all of them, and other 
steps, etc...)

But I'm sure there are many use cases outside my knowledge which you are 
presumably referring to which are speedier still, and the right choice 
for some situations but not others.

What I see however, is a LiveUSB that boots purty darn fast, and allows 
installation purty darn fast.  In fact, I envision a LiveUSB image that 
acts pretty much like most LiveUSB's you are familiar with, but which 
may also have a bootloader option to take you straight into the 
afore-described minimal ssh/yumable state in just a couple minutes, 
without even requiring any subsequent reboot before attaining fully 
operational production state.

But what I'm describing are things I'd like to experiment with building, 
and present as experimental options and ideas to this list in the 
future.  Absolutely off-topic as far as the obvious priority #1 of this 
list at the moment.  So...  never mind for now.

-dmc